The Precipice

Starred review from April 27, 2015
Doiron brings his gift for making the Maine woods live and breathe to a taut whodunit in his stellar sixth novel featuring game warden Mike Bowditch (after 2014’s The Bone Orchard). Bowditch is pulled away from a romantic weekend with his biologist girlfriend, Stacey Stevens, when word reaches the authorities that two young women have disappeared while hiking the Appalachian Trail’s daunting Hundred Mile Wilderness. Samantha Boggs and Missy Montgomery, recent graduates of Pentecost University, a Christian school in the South, failed to check in with their parents in Georgia three days earlier, triggering a massive manhunt. Bowditch is teamed with an unusual volunteer, Bob Nissen (known as Nonstop for his record pace hiking the entire trail), and is soon able to narrow the parameters of the search. Bowditch identifies the women’s “point last seen” via a logbook entry that contains an ominous reference to coyotes. Multidimensional characters and a high level of suspense help make this a winner. Agent: Ann Rittenberg, Ann Rittenberg Literary Agency.

August 31, 2015
Book six in Edgar finalist Doiron’s series featuring Mike Bowditch (after 2014’s The Bone Orchard) has the Appalachian Trail game warden reluctantly diverted from a romantic weekend with a new girlfriend to participate in a hunt for two young women who’ve disappeared in the deepest part of the Hundred-Mile Wilderness. Initially paired with an oddball extreme hiker, Bob “Nonstop” Nissen, Mike gets ample opportunity to display his mental and physical prowess, zeroing in on the missing hikers while battling the elements, bureaucracy, and the Dows, a family of very unfriendly sociopaths. Stage and TV actor Leyva has been reading the series since its debut. His portrayal of Mike, the novel’s narrator, has been youthful, eager, and slightly naive, entirely appropriate for the start of the character’s career, but he’s now sounding a bit jejune for an experienced game warden and too soft to gain the attention, much less the respect, of the rough customers he meets on the trail. When it comes to those tough guys, however, Leyva’s interpretation is spot on. A Minotaur hardcover.

Two young Christian women get lost hiking the Appalachian Trail in Maine, and veteran game warden Mike Bowditch learns they were the victims of foul play. Narrator Henry Leyva keeps listeners on the edge of their seats with his delivery of a story with more murder suspects than Maine has pine trees. He makes the Dow family, reprehensible mountain trash, sound so real that listeners will hate them. But are they the villains who killed the girls? Revelations that the girls were lesbians add another layer of suspects. Leyva even does a fine job with female characters, like the warden's annoying, impulsive girlfriend. This is an excellent, chilling story and performance. M.S. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine