Vanishing Edge

Sequoia National Park is demanding even on good days, so when a ranger finds an abandoned upscale campsite on the shore of an alpine lake, with an empty tent and expensive technical gear left behind, the forest begins to look far more ominous. Readers who enjoy Christine Carbo and Scott Graham may find a match here.

Felicity Harland, thirty-two, is a former FBI agent who walked away from the Bureau after a personal loss and has been working well outside the usual system. Now she serves as lead investigator for the Investigative Services Bureau, a federal unit that handles crimes on national park land, from unexplained falls and domestic disputes to a suspected murder.

The private firm that organized the camp refuses to disclose who its clients were, which leaves Felicity with nothing to follow. Her past keeps catching up with her. Then she meets Ferdinand Huxley, a former Navy SEAL who now works as a park ranger, and discovers that a partner can be someone she depends on, not merely someone she works beside.

The search takes Felicity and Hux into remote backcountry that pushes their stamina and nerve to their limits, and then into the gritty streets of Los Angeles, where they start to uncover what really happened to the missing campers. The wilderness, the book suggests, holds more danger than the elements alone, because some of what goes wrong there is deliberate.