Book Review: The Precipice

The Precipice

Game warden Mike Bowditch's hopes of spending a romantic weekend with his wildlife biologist girlfriend Stacey goes down the drain after he is suddenly called over to participate in a search for two Georgia women Samantha "Baby Ruth" Boggs and Missy "Naomi Walks" Montgomery, who appear to have vanished into thin air while hiking the Hundred-Mile Wilderness. As much as he fervently hopes to find them alive, Bowditch's worst fears are confirmed when their bodies are discovered, stripped clean of bones by coyotes, leading to widespread panic and rumours that the hikers were attacked by aggressive canines lurking in the wild.

Stacey however isn't convinced and insists that they were murdered, and is eventually proved right when she herself goes missing, forcing Bowditch to locate her, and in the process, umask the murderer camouflaged in the garb of a coyote. Doiron's writing is very much evocative, you can almost experience the scenic wilderness of Maine in his striking, vivid prose, but the story on the whole, its rushed ending included, is a colossal let down, a lot lacking in urgency, filled with singularly uninteresting characters (the sexual predilection of the girls served no real purpose, in my opinion) and elaborate red-herrings that lead nowhere.