"One step too far" by Lisa Gardner

An audio book.

5 years ago, Tim (soon to be married) was with friends in a Wyoming wilderness when he disappeared. Each year his father, Martin, organises a search party. This year Frankie Elkin (no fixed abode. Her 1st person PoV) tries to join them. It's her hobby to find missing people. The search party includes the people who were with Tim (one of whom, Scott, is about to marry Tim's intended wife), a dog handler, Nemeth (a local guide), etc. The search will last 7 days. We learn about Frankie's past (alcoholic father, parents' death, alcoholism, being saved by Paul, Paul's death). She talks to each of the party, learning clues to help work out what happened. They hear wails in the night and their food is stolen. We learn that Martin's wife is soon to die, and that someone seems to trying to stop the trip (his car was sabotaged, etc). Tim's friends reveal what really happened 5 years ago - Tim confessed to various sins (not least getting one of his friend's sister pregnant) which had angered them. Did one of the friends kill Tim? Was Tim still alive? Frankie finds a network of tunnels. 8 bodies.

One of the group is wounded by a shot. Some of the team decide to go back to town so they can get a helicopter to pick up the others. A sniper tries to pick off the rest, shooting Martin when he makes a run for it. There's hand-to-hand combat at one point. After hours Martin returns and is knifed.

One by one they're picked off. Only 2 are mobile as a helicopter appears. She wakes after 36 hours in hospital. She's told what's happened. Some of the group have survived. Frankie works out that Marge (who runs the diner) and Nemeth did the killing.

I'd have liked to have known more about the main character.

Good reads

• goodreads
• The reading cafe
• Michael J McCann (Gardner has a very confident approach to storytelling. She carefully portions out the answers to all of Frankie’s (and our) questions, one or two at a time, chapter by chapter, cliffhanger after cliffhanger, maximizing the suspense while stretching our patience close to the breaking point. ... Gardner falters, however, when she wraps up her tale. The ultimate solution to the mystery of Tim’s disappearance and the ongoing threat to the party, once it’s finally revealed to us, is rather anti-climatic—a far cry from the whiz-bang conclusion you’d expect from a nerve-wracking thriller. Gardner seems much more interested in coyly stringing out the mystery to the bitter end than in smacking us between the eyes with a shocking finale. As well, the epilogue tacked on to tie up all the various loose ends is drawn out and a little sappy, more appropriate to one of her romance novels than a suspense thriller. It could have been chopped, or at least drastically trimmed, and the novel would have been better for it.)