One Step Too Far

This is the 3rd book I have read by Lisa Gardner and the 2nd of hers (Before She Disappeared) featuring  this protagonist, Frankie Elkin.  Frankie is a recovering alcoholic who has left behind too many people she loved and who have loved her. She takes on the hardest of missing persons cold cases, totally of her own volition and without getting paid. Frankie describes herself as an "average, middle-aged white woman, short on belongings, long on regret." She is on her way to search for a missing boy when she reads about a man who went missing 5 years ago in the wilds of Wyoming's Shosone National Forest. Nobody is particularly happy or welcoming when she shows up in town and volunteers to help the annual search party organized by the missing man's father. But one member of the group, who is an active member of an online chat room for missing persons, vouches for Frankie's bona fides and, when another member of the group goes into the DT's, Frankie is in. The search this year will focus on the one area near where the man was camped that has yet to be searched because of the difficult terrain to reach it. But things start to go wrong from the very beginning. Their food bags, hanging in the trees, are slashed and a significant portion of their supplies go missing. A member of their group is injured when he is hit in the head, ostensibly by a falling rock. The secrets from the night of the disappearance begin to emerge. It turns out that several other hikers have gone missing over the last few years in this same area. But the source of the problem comes as a total surprise, at least to me. As usual, Gardners tight plotting, rich settings and well-developed characters pulled me in and kept me reading late into the evening.

I agree with Publishers Weekly that I hope we get to see more of Frankie Elkin. Kirkus' review concludes, "Terrifying, primal, and very, very tense. Read it with your heart in your throat—but read it."