It is spring, and the semi-preserved body of a young Jewish woman is discovered buried in the Maine woods. It is clear that she gave birth shortly before her death.
But there is no sign of a baby.
Private detective Charlie Parker is engaged by the lawyer Moxie Castin to shadow the police investigation and find the infant, but Parker is not the only searcher. Someone else is following the trail left by the woman, someone with an interest in more than a missing child, someone prepared to leave bodies in his wake.
And in a house by the woods, a toy telephone begins to ring.
For a young boy is about to receive a call from a dead woman
***
[The bar was one of the more recent additions to Portland's waterfront, although the term 'recent' was relative given the rapid pace of development in the city] ***(Hodder & Stoughton, 5 April 2018, ebook, 496 pages, bought from Amazon, Popsugar Reading Challenge, a book that's published in 2018)
***
***
I've loved the Charlie Parker books since I was blown away by Every Dead Thing many years ago. I can't quite believe The Woman in the Woods is the 16 th book. How time flies when you're having a good time. It took a while to get into this one. I don't have any concrete reason why. It just did. After a few weeks I'd only read 20%. The magic hadn't happened but I knew it would, this was a Charlie Parker novel after all, so I just had to be patient. And it happened. Everything fell into place and I read the remaining 80% of The Woman in the Woods in a couple of hours. What I love about these books is the hint at the supernatural, characters that are not quite human and shadowy creatures lurking at the edge of things. I felt the supernatural elements in The Woman in the Woods are a lot more subtle than previous books. Maybe that's why it took ages to get into it? I loved it anyway. I looked forward to book 17 of my favourite series.