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    The Precipice: A Novel
    The Precipice: A Novel
    The Precipice: A Novel
    Audiobook9 hours

    The Precipice: A Novel

    Written by Paul Doiron

    Narrated by Henry Leyva

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    In this riveting new novel from Edgar finalist Paul Doiron, Bowditch joins a desperate search for two missing hikers as Maine wildlife officials deal with a frightening rash of coyote attacks.

    When two female hikers disappear in the Hundred Mile Wilderness-the most remote stretch along the entire Appalachian Trail-Maine game warden Mike Bowditch joins the desperate search to find them.

    Hope turns to despair after two unidentified corpses are discovered-their bones picked clean by coyotes. Do the bodies belong to the missing hikers? And were they killed by the increasingly aggressive wild dogs?

    Soon, all of Maine is gripped with the fear of killer coyotes. But Bowditch has his doubts. His new girlfriend, wildlife biologist Stacey Stevens, insists the scavengers are being wrongly blamed. She believes a murderer may be hiding in the offbeat community of hikers, hippies, and woodsmen at the edge of the Hundred Mile Wilderness. When Stacey herself disappears along the Appalachian Trail, the hunt for answers becomes personal.

    Can Mike Bowditch find the woman he loves before the most dangerous animal in the North Woods strikes again?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Audio
    Release dateJun 16, 2015
    ISBN9781427263148
    The Precipice: A Novel
    Author

    Paul Doiron

    A native of Maine, bestselling author PAUL DOIRON attended Yale University, where he graduated with a degree in English. The Poacher’s Son, the first book in the Mike Bowditch series, won the Barry award, the Strand award for best first novel, and has been nominated for the Edgar, Anthony, and Macavity awards in the same category. He is a Registered Maine Guide specializing in fly fishing and lives on a trout stream in coastal Maine with his wife, Kristen Lindquist.

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    Reviews for The Precipice

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    • 5/5
      The book was good the parts that I got!! Starting in chapter 17 it would skip ahead in the book mid sentence. I found this very frustrating because I missed parts of the book and didn’t know what was going on!!!
    • 4/5
      When two young female hikers disappear in the Hundred Mile Wilderness—the most remote stretch along the entire two-thousand mile Appalachian Trail—Maine game warden Mike Bowditch joins the search to find them. The police interview everyone they can find who came in contact with the college students and learn that the women were lovers who had been keeping their relationship secret from their Evangelical parents in Georgia.When two corpses are discovered—the bones picked clean by coyotes—rumors spread that the women were stalked and killed by the increasingly aggressive canines. Faced with a statewide panic, Maine’s governor places an emergency bounty on every dead coyote, and wildlife officials are tasked with collecting the carcasses.Despite some misgivings, Bowditch does his grisly job. But he finds his complacency challenged by his new girlfriend, the brilliant but volatile biologist Stacey Stevens, who insists coyotes merely scavenged the bodies after the women were murdered. When Stacey herself disappears on the outskirts of the Hundred Mile Wilderness, Bowditch realizes that locating her means he must also discover the truth behind what happened to the two hikers. Were the young women really killed by coyotes or, as Stacey insisted, were they murdered by the most dangerous animal in the North Woods?
    • 4/5
      Another Mike Bowditch page turner. This time its the Appalachain Trail and Greenville. Not a lot of development of the bad guy in this one but images of Moosehead and Squaw Mt and Monson return.
    • 5/5
      Paul Doiron's stellar new Mike Bowditch novel, The Precipice, is his best yet, which is saying something. In Precipice we get to visit the 100 Mile Wilderness section of the Appalachian Trail, where murder and mayhem ensue! (Not to mention Bowditch's continued quest to understand the female mind.) Great writing, artful plot, plus nobody does Maine people & countryside like PD…loved this Maine Warden mystery!
    • 2/5
      I did not enjoy this book as much as the first two in the series. It plodded along at a slow pace.
    • 2/5
      First off I have to comment and say that the fact that sexuality was brought up involving some of the characters did not brother be. In fact, it is almost kind of expected that this would appear more and more in books as it already does in my television shows. So you could say I have grown immune to this although it is not my faith. No, my issue was that despite actually liking Mike and his relationship with his girlfriend, Stacey, and the lovely backdrop for this story, I really felt no connect towards the missing women and therefore was not as invested in what happened to them or how the story would end. In fact, I found the story to move along at a slow and steady pace without a lot of heightened intensity. So for almost of the middle of the story for me it seemed to grow stale. The last four chapters is when the story really came together and picked up speed.
    • 4/5
      This is the sixth book in Doiron’s crime series featuring Maine game warden Mike Bowditch. (In Maine, game wardens are full law-enforcement officers, with all the powers of state troopers: “They are the ‘off-road police.’”) Mike, 28, has been a game warden for four years, and has been dating Stacy Stevens, the daughter of his old friend and mentor Charley, for four months as this book begins. While on small vacation with Stacy, Mike gets word he needs to head up to the the Hundred Mile Wilderness to help search for two missing women. Stacy, a biologist with the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, decides to join in the search party that also includes the Warden Service, the state police, and the FBI.No one believes the women will be found alive; the question is, if and when they do find them, what happened to them?Discussion: Doiron is the former editor of Down East Magazine, a Registered Maine Guide, and someone who clearly loves the Maine wilderness. Much of the narrative is interspersed with descriptions of its beauty, and informative background information. For example, at one point, they come across a sugar maple that had been hit by lightning:"When lightning strikes a tree, the electricity travels through the sap, and the superheated liquid explodes the living plant from within.”Who knew?We learn about Thoreau’s expeditions in Maine as well - who knew he left Walden Pond?And always, there are passages of pure appreciation for the beauty of Maine:"The sun hadn’t yet cleared the hills in the east, but the sky above the lake was streaked wth pink and gold, and there wasn’t a breath of wind to stir the leaves of the maples. The lake, visible between the sleeping houses, was as flat and blue as stained glass.”I’m sorry to say I didn’t even know about Gulf Hagas, a stunning gorge located in the mountains of central Maine and known as “the Grand Canyon of the East.” But as beautiful as the scenery is, there is a lot of ugliness in the wilderness too. As Stacy points out, “People want to believe in big bad wolves. But only humans can be truly evil.”Mike, Stacey, and their colleagues encounter plenty of evil in their quest to find out the fate of the girls. As Stacey’s dad Charley said of one suspect, “That man is the most unusual specimen of God’s carelessness I ever came across.”Evaluation: As with Doiron’s previous books, there is so much more than just a crime story in his writing. There is excellent background information on Maine and on what it means to work as a warden there, and a lot of philosophical contemplation. It is not necessary to have read the previous books, but as with any series, the story is more meaningful if you start it from the beginning.
    • 2/5
      The Precipice: A Novel (Mike Bowditch, #6)This is a good book for a vacation read. The main character is male, so I think both male and female will enjoy it, if they accept that it is an easy and somewhat exciting very light read. I had read another book by this author, The Poacher's Son", but it seemed to have far more substance. Still, if you are looking for a quick, mindless endeavor, it would be a viable choice.I believe that it would have been more intriguing absent the silly romantic scenes, one such being the sighting of a honeymoon couple that was noticed fornicating outdoors, thinking they were unnoticed. The ranger, Mike Bowditch and his girlfriend, Stacy, decided to subtly ridicule them. The obvious purpose of the scene seemed to be to amuse and titillate the reader since it certainly did not enhance the narrative. Also, in this novel, the ranger had an unconventional sidekick with him, against the rules most of the time. His girlfriend, Stacy was a really big part of the story, although, from the beginning, she was not a ranger involved in the investigation of the whereabouts of two missing young women hikers, which preoccupied Bowditch. Her presence and their romantic interludes made the story less plausible for me as much of the story became more about the Stacy‘s mishaps, rather than the original investigation of two missing young, female hikers. When they are found, Stacey legitimately joins the investigation as a wildlife biologist when coyotes are implicated in their disappearance. They were hiking in a remote region of The Appalachian Trail, in Maine. In order to take the tale into modernity, I expect, and to be more inclusive, the two hikers are described as gay. It, like the silly honeymoon sex scene, had no real relevance to the plot. It seems to me that many authors, perhaps in the interest of proving their liberal bent, are including diverse sexual interests into their latest novels which neither enhance nor detract but serve no real purpose. For me, the sexual predilection of a character holds no particular importance unless the story is about their unjust treatment. That theme was not highly developed in this book and certainly no mention was made of other characters heterosexuality. However, the diversity of characters included oddball ministers (bringing organized religion into the spotlight rather negatively), ex-convicts, the mentally disabled, overweight hikers, honeymooners, mountain men, thugs and more.Both Mike and Stacey are known for being loose cannons, but Mike has been trying to keep his impetuosity under wraps so that he can become a more respected ranger. His reputation has followed him, though, and he has to work hard to correct it. His relationship with his girlfriend forces him to stretch that envelope, on occasion.Even with its drawbacks, which some people will actually enjoy, as a beach read this will hold your attention and require little effort or the involvement of your brain. The beauty of the state of Maine is emphasized, and anyone who has been there will agree. The positives and negatives of hiking in remote areas is stressed, as well as the wonderful service that the Rangers provide to tourists and residents alike. Some conclusions will seem contrived as the investigation broadens and the number of possible suspects exhibiting suspicious behavior increases. However, it comes to a satisfying conclusion as the mystery of the missing hikers and other investigations are all resolved. Justice prevails!It is read evenly and well by Henry Levya. His modulated voice portrayed the different characters well.
    • 4/5
      Paul Doiron continues to improve his story-telling skills in this latest of the Mike Bowditch series set in the northern woods of Maine. The story contains mystery, romance, animals (both human and wild), and a tale of egos, gorgeous scenery, and high adventures in the Maine Wilderness. I don't want to spoil the story. It's a fast-paced, page turning look at the multi-facted life of Maine Game Wardens as they go about protecting land, people, resources, and wildlife. Mike Bowditch is maturing as a character, Paul Doiron is maturing as a writer, and that all adds up to a treat for the reader.
    • 5/5
      I love this series!Ok, I am a sucker for books set in Maine, especially written by someone like Doiron, who knows and love the state so well.And they are very good adventure mysteries, led by our less than perfect but so likable hero, Mike Bowditch. Especially since he got rid of his girlfriend from the first books and finally met his slightly mysterious soulmate Stacey. Hope that works out...Another great story, this one about two young woman who go missing while hiking the Appalachian Trail. As usual I did not see the solution coming, a good thing. Very good book in a very good series.Can't wait for the next Mr. Doiron!