The Girl in the Woods

In the prologue of this carefully plotted novel of psychological suspense from MacDonald (Don’t Believe a Word), 13-year-old Blair Butler is playing with her best friend, 12-year-old Molly Sinclair, at the Yorktown, Pa., home of Blair’s uncle Ellis, with whom Blair and her older sister, Celeste, have lived since their mother’s death eight years earlier. When Molly defends Blair’s desire to go to computer summer camp, which Ellis says he can’t afford, he gets angry and orders the girl to go home. She never makes it. Some 15 years later, Celeste is dying of cancer, and Blair, now the owner of a successful computer firm in Philadelphia, returns to Yorktown to say goodbye. When the women are alone, Celeste confesses to Blair that she didn’t come forward to provide an alibi for Adrian Jones, who was convicted of Molly’s murder, and she asks her sister to tell the authorities and gain Jones’s release from prison. Blair’s attempts to free Jones stir up a nest of sinister secrets that lie beneath Yorkville’s placid surface. Fans of thrillers set in small-town America will be rewarded. Agent: Meg Ruley, Jane Rotrosen Agency. (June)