Sign up for our newsletters to receive our Best of 2024 ezine!

Book Summary and Reviews of The Precipice by Paul Doiron

The Precipice by Paul Doiron

The Precipice

A Novel (Mike Bowditch Mysteries)

by Paul Doiron

  • Critics' Consensus (0):
  • Published:
  • Jun 2015, 336 pages
  • Rate this book

About this book

Book Summary

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?

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. Multidimensional characters and a high level of suspense help make this a winner." - Publishers Weekly

"Starred Review. This is one of the finest entries in a uniformly strong series that has quietly taken its place among the very best outdoors-based crime dramas." - Booklist

"Doiron offers backstory for new readers, while fans of outdoorsy mysteries and Daniel Woodrell will enjoy seeing another aspect of backwoods law and order." - Library Journal

"As scenically evocative as Bowditch's first four cases but not nearly as dense, conclusive, or interesting." - Kirkus

This information about The Precipice was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Author Information

Paul Doiron Author Biography

Photo: Mark Fleming

Paul Doiron is the author of the Mike Bowditch series of crime novels, including The Poacher's Son, which won the the Barry Award and the Strand Critics Award for Best First Novel and was nominated for an Edgar Award, an Anthony Award, a Macavity Award, and a Thriller Award for Best First Novel, and the Maine Literary Award for "Best Fiction of 2010." PopMatters named it to its Best Fiction of 2010 list.

His second book, Trespasser, won the Maine Literary Award, was an American Booksellers Association Indie Bestseller, and has been called a "masterpiece of high-octane narrative" by Booklist. The third novel, Bad Little Falls, was a Bookscan Bestseller and a nominee for the RT Reviewers Choice Award and the Maine Literary Award. Massacre Pond, the fourth in the series, was an Indie Next...

... Full Biography
Author Interview
Link to Paul Doiron's Website

Name Pronunciation
Paul Doiron: DWAHR-uhn. First syllable rhymes with "R"

Other books by Paul Doiron at BookBrowse
  • The Poacher's Son jacket

9 more...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

More Recommendations

Readers Also Browsed . . .

more thrillers...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: Model Home
    Model Home
    by Rivers Solomon
    Rivers Solomon's novel Model Home opens with a chilling and mesmerizing line: "Maybe my mother is ...
  • Book Jacket
    The Frozen River
    by Ariel Lawhon
    "I cannot say why it is so important that I make this daily record. Perhaps because I have been ...
  • Book Jacket
    Prophet Song
    by Paul Lynch
    Paul Lynch's 2023 Booker Prize–winning Prophet Song is a speedboat of a novel that hurtles...
  • Book Jacket: The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern
    The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern
    by Lynda Cohen Loigman
    Lynda Cohen Loigman's delightful novel The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern opens in 1987. The titular ...

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
In Our Midst
by Nancy Jensen
In Our Midst follows a German immigrant family’s fight for freedom after their internment post–Pearl Harbor.
Book Jacket
The Berry Pickers
by Amanda Peters
A four-year-old Mi'kmaq girl disappears, leaving a mystery unsolved for fifty years.
Who Said...

Use what talents you possess: The woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Big Holiday Wordplay 2024

Enter Now

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.