I’d already read all of the books in author Paul Doiron’s series about Maine Game Warden Mike Bowditch. I’ve received an advanced reader copy of several of the more recent ones and decided I needed to go back and review the older ones. It had been a while since I read them, and I thought I’d better go back and read them again before writing a review. I decided to listen to the audiobook. It’s a good thing I did, because there was a lot in The Precipice I’d forgotten since I read it the first time.

The Precipice is the sixth book in the series. It opens with Mike Bowditch enjoying a weekend at the beach with his current girlfriend, Stacey Stevens. He is called away when two young women who are through-hiking the Appalachian Trail are reported missing, having last been seen in the northwestern Maine town of Greenville, entering a part of the trail known as the Hundred-Mile Wilderness. The two women come from a very religious, conservative background, having graduated from a Christian college. Their parents arrive on the scene, accompanied by their Christian minister. They are also wealthy and well-connected.

On the initial search, where they are trying to figure out the last place the women were seen, Mike is accompanied by a legend of the Appalachian Trail, “Nonstop” Nissen, who once set a through-hiking record for the trail. Mike and Nissen do not get along, but Mike deals with him for the investigation’s sake. They find the place where the women signed a logbook for the trail and pinpoint that as the last known location. Although there’s still a hope of finding the women alive, the reality is that after ten days of no contact with anyone, they are more than likely to find their bodies.

When the bodies are found, they have been ravaged by coyotes. There are not enough of the women left to tell what happened to them. The remains of the bodies are sent to forensics. In response, the governor of Maine enacts a bounty on coyote pelts. Stacey Stevens came up to join the search, and as a Maine state biologist herself, she’s tasked with helping collect the coyote pelts. It’s not what her job is supposed to be about.

Mike suspects the coyotes are not responsible for the women’s deaths, only opportunists who happened upon the bodies. He keeps investigating while everyone else seems to accept that the rogue coyotes killed the women. There’s no shortage of suspects in this area of Maine.

I’ve been just about everywhere in Maine while geocaching. This area happens to be a favorite of mine. I enjoy the isolation of the area and the somewhat unspoiled wilderness, with the exception of logging activity. Doiron’s descriptions of the area are spot on. It is remote with houses that generally fall into two classifications: second homes that look well cared for, or owner-occupied homes that seem to be in the middle of a junkyard. His characterization of the people there is spot-on as well. Nissen is the loner type who wants to avoid people except when he’s the center of attention. The “new” resident in town, who opened a modern hostel for hikers, is resented by the people who have lived in the area all their lives. They don’t mind taking outsiders’ money; they just want them to leave afterward.

The story of the women themselves is tragic. They are two women just coming into themselves when their lives are cut short. It’s an unsubtle lesson about accepting your children for who they are instead of trying to force them to fit into a very narrow set of guidelines in life under which you will accept them.

I thought Stacey’s presence was a distraction for most of the book. Right from the start, when she’s with Mike at the beach and all hands are called on deck for the search for the missing hikers, I had to wonder why she didn’t go with him. As a state employee, with her familiarity with the woods, I would have thought her presence was a given. Of course, this does give Mike the chance to be partnered with Nissen and lets the reader know more about him. She makes a lot of mistakes throughout the story, though. There’s also a hint of something terrible having happened to her during a hike similar to the one the missing hikers undertook. She won’t open up to Mike about it, though. It felt to me like she was still keeping Mike at arm’s length.

Then there is the Dow family. They have lived in the area since it was settled, slowly selling off their land and resenting having to do it. The family is very insular, which explains the existence of the young man with Down syndrome. Why the state of Maine has allowed them to exist this long is a bit of a mystery. You would have thought that social workers or law enforcement would have been on top of them long before these hikers went missing. Families like this have always existed in rural areas. It’s just a matter of either adapting and changing with the times or trying to hold onto a world that doesn’t exist any longer.

The narration by Henry Levya is well done. He used different inflections in his voice for different characters, but didn’t do so much that it was a distraction to the overall story. He manages to convey the feel of the story without putting too much of himself into it.

The Precipice was a terrific entry into the Mike Bowditch series. There was tension throughout, and I didn’t know who had committed the murders until the end. There’s some advancement of the relationship between Mike and Stacey, although I also felt like there was still a good bit of distance between them. Doiron’s descriptions are spot-on. If you’ve ever thought about hiking the Appalachian Trail, you might want to read this first.

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