3.5

Got a netgalley copy of book three in this series and felt compelled to go back and read the first two before tackling the new story.

This introduces Harland and Hux as a crime solving duo in the National Parks. Lots of twists and turns in this murder plot and I enjoyed the backdrop of Sequoia NP.

I don’t know that there’s anything particularly special about this series but it was enjoyable enough. I did quite enjoy the author showing her Philly roots by mentioning Hux’s favorite food was Scrapple. He might really be the perfect man. ( )

action, celebrities, crime-thriller, dog, ex-SEAL, family-drama, family-dynamics, federal-agents, first-in-series, friends, friendship, law-enforcement, missing-persons, National Park, search-and-rescue, Sequoia, survival, survivor's guilt, suspense, theft, due diligence*****

Special Agent Felicity Harland of the Investigative Services Bureau which deals with crimes occurring on National Park lands is sent to Sequoia NP to investigate the disappearance of a celebrity and her companion. Her partner at this site is former navy SEAL and accomplished tracker Ranger Ferdinand Huxley (Hux) who is k in this wintry, large, wild park with some serious elevation challenges. With the help of Search and Rescue, complete with a dive team, the body of the celebrity is found. Now the question becomes: suicide, accident, or homicide. Excellent development of characters and story, complete with a final twist that totally blindsided me!
I bought this one after reading book two courtesy of NetGalley, and now I wait for book three!
Natalie Naudus is the narrator who is very good but has problems with her recording booth. ( )

I was attracted to the story by the National Park setting, but I never got the impression that the author was more than a casual visitor to Sequoia NP. So that was disappointing. But the characters were interesting. I really like that the dog acted like a dog, unfortunately dogs are not allowed on the trails in Sequoia NP.
I wish the author good luck with this series. ( )

Vanishing Edge

Just over three years ago, Felicity Harland should have died while on a camping trip with her partner Kevin. He vanished and she was left with his loss and a destroyed back. While the FBI granted her an extended medical leave, over time she read the proverbial writing on the wall, and left the agency. These days she is a recently hired Criminal Investigator for the Investigative Services Branch and deals with crimes of all types that happen in National Parks.

Pulled off a case in Yosemite, she and her dog, a Shepard mix named Ollie, soon find themselves in Sequoia National Park dealing with Chief Ranger Rick Corrigan. He called her because of an abandoned campsite out in the vicinity of Precipice Lake. Ferdinand Huxley, the ranger that inspected the scene, could not find anyone. Clearly the campsite was set up by a very expensive company that caters to the wealthy. Their logo was on every item at the site. One of those companies that specializes in “luxury camping” where they set up everything so their wealthy clients do nothing but show up. While nobody knows who the clients are, and the company reps won’t say claiming privacy concerns, it is pretty clear that they are not there. A check of the area indicates that the folks are not just wandering around nearby either.

Huxley and Handy team up and it is not long before they find signs that indicated at least one of the missing campers crashed through a hole in the ice on the high-altitude lake. It is April and still cold, so that person is most likely dead. Recovery of the body is going to be difficult and require a tea and resources. That still does not address what happened to at least one other person who had been at the campsite.

Then there is the fact that missing wealthy campers is not the only problem in these woods. Nature itself is not the only threat in Vanishing Edge: A Novel by Claire Kells.

Billed as the first book in a news series, this is an intense and complicated read. Along with plenty of backstory for the two primary characters Huxley and Hardy, that is slowly revealed, the case itself is a complicated chase that runs from the mountains of the park to the streets of Los Angeles. Much is at work here in this novel that sets an expansive and detailed ground floor for the upcoming series. This very good book is well worth your time and strongly recommended.

My reading copy came from the Highland Hills Branch of the Dallas Public Library System.

Kevin R. Tipple © 2022 ( )

'Vanishing Edge' is the first book in a series of mysteries set in US National Parks. I picked it up because I liked the Sequoia setting, the book was free on Audible Plus and there was a dog in it.

It was an entertaining light read that was one part mystery, one part romance, one part woman-overcoming-personal-tragedy and three parts hiking through beautiful but demanding terrain. The dog didn't have a speaking part.

The mystery wasn't complex but it kept me guessing. The treks through the wilderness were ambitious, given the physical condition of our heroine (who, amongst other things, is recovering from a broken back) but it felt real. The romance was mainly of the bantering-while-we-come-to-terms-with-our-mutual-attraction kind. The dialogue was well done. The male lead was engaging. The female lead was a little bland at times.

I had enough fun with this to keep me listening but there wasn't enough there to make me seek out the next book in the series although, if it was already in my vertiginous TBR pile, I'd be happy enough to read it.

I listened to the audiobook version of 'Vanishing Edge' narrated by Natalie Naudus. I liked the narration. I thought the tone and pace were both on target. I was surprised that the quality of the production wasn't as high as I'd have expected. There were several points where the narrator had had to go back a read a paragraph again, which is fine, but these were poorly integrated into the audio - the aural equivalent of a jarring change in font in the text - which made them distracting.
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