She Treads Softly: The Woods are Waiting

Sunday, July 2, 2023

The Woods are Waiting

The Woods are Waiting by Katherine Greene
7/11/23; 288 pages
Crooked Lane Books

The Woods are Waiting by Katherine Greene is a highly recommended debut mystery.

Blue Cliff, Virginia, has a dark history pointing at the Hickory Man living in the woods preying on children. Children are taught to put soil from the woods in their shoes and carry silver coins to ward off the Hickory Man, but there is also a history of this not working. Cheyenne Ashby left five years ago without warning after three children were found dead in the woods. A local man went to prison for it, but doubts remain.

Now Cheyenne is called to return home and help her mother, Constance, who lives in a cabin in the woods and is busy trying everything she knows to ward off the evil she sees coming. Another child has disappeared, which is what prompted her frantic activity. Cheyennes friend, Natalie, is still in town and the two are determined to discover what is really happening.

This is a solid debut mystery with a creepy something-is-in-the-deep-dark-woods plot element. Cheyenne and Natalie are not about to fall for the local rumors when looking for the answers to the latest missing child, as well as the truth about the previous three missing children. Greene does a respectable job of creating suspense and developing her characters while presenting local superstitions and the fear running rampant in the small town.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Crooked Lane Books via NetGalley.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.