Lisa Gardner - One Step Too Far

 

Rating: 4/5

 

Review:

Some good aspects, some serious implausibility 

 

I enjoyed a lot about One Step Too Far, but in places it strained credibility just a little too far itself.

The story is narrated by Frankie Elkin, rather a rootless, lost soul and recovering alcoholic, who travels around trying to locate people who have been missing for a long time. She appears to be doing this to escape from her own demons, although she repeatedly asks herself “Why do I do this?” without managing an answer. For her trouble she gets paid nothing, it seems, so she’s poorly equipped to join an expedition to try to find Tim, a young man who disappeared five years ago on his pre-wedding trip with his friends into the Wyoming wilderness. Tim’s father has organised these trips annually and the group of friends, riven with guilt, join in along with two more experienced wilderness explorers plus a cadaver dog and her handler.

The beginning is very well done, even if the group’s acceptance of Frankie is pretty unlikely. The preparations and development of a serious hike into the wilderness are interesting and absorbing, and the dynamics in the group are interesting and very plausibly developed. As things – inevitably – turn more sinister, plausibility begins to recede somewhat, but for some time it’s well within the bounds of suspension of disbelief. I have to say, though, that it did become pretty silly toward the end. Lisa Gardner’s writing is very good, so the tension and exhaustion of being stranded in the wilderness while apparently being hunted is very well portrayed, but some of the events themselves strained my credulity well beyond its elastic limit. The Big Reveal was also, shall we say, unlikely in the extreme, both in the revelation itself and the manner in which it happens, so the later parts of the book took some of the shine off the very good opening for me.

Overall, this remains a four-star book because Gardner’s characterisation, sense of place and so on are good enough to compensate for much (but not all) of the later plot implausibilities. Certainly a decent holiday read, and with enough here to encourage me to try the next in the series.

(My thanks to Random House for an ARC vis NetGalley.)