Margins
The Precipice book cover
The Precipice
2015
First Published
4.10
Average Rating
329
Number of Pages

Part of Series

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 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?

Avg Rating
4.10
Number of Ratings
5,357
5 STARS
32%
4 STARS
49%
3 STARS
16%
2 STARS
2%
1 STARS
1%
goodreads

Author

Paul Doiron
Paul Doiron
Author · 24 books

Paul Doiron is the best-selling author of the Mike Bowditch series of crime novels set in the Maine woods. His first book, The Poacher’s Son, won the Barry Award and the Strand Critics Award and was nominated for an Edgar for Best First Novel. His second, Trespasser, won the 2012 Maine Literary Award. His novelette “Rabid” was a finalist for the 2019 Edgar in the Best Short Story category. Paul’s twelfth book, Dead by Dawn won the New England Society’s 2022 Book Award for Fiction, as well as his second Maine Literary Award. It was also a finalist for the Barry Award. His books have been translated into 11 languages. Paul is the former chair of the Maine Humanities Council, Editor Emeritus of Down East: The Magazine of Maine, and a Registered Maine Guide specializing in fly fishing.

548 Market St PMB 65688, San Francisco California 94104-5401 USA
© 2025 Paratext Inc. All rights reserved