Thirty years ago, a child was found in the New Jersey backwoods.
Living a feral existence and with no memory of his past, the locals just called him Wilde.
Now a former soldier and security expert, Wilde lives off the grid, shunned by the community - until they need him.
A child has gone missing. Her family suspect she's only playing a disappearing game. Nobody seems concerned except for criminal attorney Hester Crimstein, who contacts Wilde and asks him to use his unique skills to find the girl.
But even he can find no trace. One day passes, then another, then a third.
On the fourth, a human finger shows up in the mail.
And now Wilde knows this is no game. It's a race against time to save the girl's life - and expose the town's dark secrets...
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(@arrowpublishing, 3 September 2020, 400 pages, paperback, bought from @AmazonUK)
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I've heard of the author before and loved The Stranger not Netflix but have never read his work. I thought this was awful and I don't know if I'd bother reading anything else by the author. Wilde reminds me a lot about a character I recently read in the novel Hermit which is a much better book. Maybe because Hermit is still fresh in my mind I couldn't connect fully to this book? I'm annoyed because I pre-ordered it and feel like I wasted my money. I wanted to know more about Wilde's life after he is found. His life doesn't seem important so why call the book The Boy from the Woods which suggests his feral childhood is vastly important? It could have been called The Missing Girl. The plot is ridiculous at times. Wilde is a stupid name for the character. He finds the girl and of course she goes missing again. Then shoe-horn in a plot about another missing person and a presidential candidate's dirty secret. WTF? Wilde is portrayed as having almost super-human abilities to find clues and make deductions that nobody else ever could. Whatever! This was just a jumbled mess of nonsense. I would have DNF'd it but I paid for it and kept thinking surely this will get better.
