The Precipice

Another winner. If you had asked me before I started reading these stories if I would have been interested in a day in the life of a Maine game warden I would have said probably not. But it appears that author Paul Doiron has an endless well of events and circumstances to draw from, and I have found as working my way through the series that I am as interested in the words and the methods the wardens use and the tools they carry with them and the preparations they make as I am about the mysteries. And as the series has progressed and the relationship between Mike and Stacey has become more certain – at least that is Mike’s fervent wish – I also find I am enjoying this romantic side of Mike and the love story that is so skillfully show more woven into the warden duties, the intrigue and the danger. The many technical details are presented in a clear, understandable, fascinating way. The romance is bumpy but sweet, and the mystery is a thought-provoking trail of clues to follow.

Mike Bowditch is well-educated, well-spoken, intelligent; a clever young man with over four years on the job now. But as his friend Charley Stevens says, he is also ‘the youngest old fart he had ever met.’ Apt description. And Mike has been so inept at relationships and is even more so with Stacey. Their relationship finally seems to be starting for real, and he’s almost comically unsure and awkward. She never keeps her mouth closed, either, when she has an opinion to share, which makes them quite the couple. But though he’s unsure and awkward, he also understands her, sees to the core of her.

In The Precipice, two female hikers disappear in the wilderness. Lost? Accident? Coyotes? Something more sinister? Mike joins the desperate search to find them. Two unidentified corpses are discovered but the widespread fear is still there. The pace of the story picks up and accelerates to lightning speed when Stacey goes missing. Once again through solid, excellent writing Doiron portrays just how soothing, majestic, beautiful yet harsh and unforgiving the wilderness can be.

If you haven’t yet read this series, start now. Exciting, rewarding, satisfying. show less

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 show more 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. show less

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 show more 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? show less

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!

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 show more 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. show less

Some time has opened up for me to read physical books and I didn't want to waste this opportunity to whittle away at my physical bookshelves. After a couple of false starts, I realized I just wanted something entertaining and easy to read as I coast into Christmas, when I anticipate receiving some new additions to those shelves.

This book fit the bill. A game warden in Maine becomes involved in the search for two women who have gone missing as they neared the end of their Appalachian Trail through-hike. Did they leave voluntarily or has something sinister happened to them?

[b:The Precipice|23014722|The Precipice (Mike Bowditch, #6)|Paul show more Doiron|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1434471519l/23014722._SY75_.jpg|42580843] is a genuine page turner. It's well constructed, with plenty of plot twists and capably developed characters. The descriptions of the Adirondacks in Maine and the small local communities set a great background for the events. No dry spots; it held my attention all the way through.

The writing was above average, even if not brilliant. A blurb on the cover says that Doiron is "shaping up as the Tony Hillerman of the east". To me, that's an overstatement. The writing is clunky in places (particularly when the author is trying to tie in the backstories of the continuing characters), and there are WAY too many brand-name references. They don't add much color to the story if you aren't already the kind of outdoorsman who would know the differences among manufacturers of esoteric gear.

But those are really small quibbles. If you are interested in an outdoorsy version of a police procedural, you'd probably enjoy this. show less

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.