By: Fabiana Barbery
There is a quality of environmental pathos in Between a Rock . . . that announces itself on the very first page and never lets go, an empathy that comes not from research trips or careful description but from the kind of heart-felt love of the natural world that only comes from having studied it, worked in it, lived in it, and thought seriously about its relevance to the human condition. Mr. Crook holds a bachelor’s degree in forest management, a master’s in city and regional planning, and a distinguished career that he brings to bear on a thriller set in the Adirondacks with a precision and a verisimilitude that makes every cliff face and every trail and every interaction between the land and the people responsible for managing it feel completely real. His stated commitment to verisimilitude, to stories that sound like the truth, is not simply an authorial philosophy. It comes from knowing the world he is writing about both inside and out.
When a breathless hiker arrives at the Marcy Dam Interior Outpost and informs Stacy, the first woman to be named crew chief in the Adirondacks, that someone has fallen from the cliffs above Avalanche Lake, Wayne, a newly recruited forester from Montana, is sent to investigate and uncovers evidence that a murder has taken place. With state police far from the scene, the Department of Environmental Conservation’s resources are stretched thin as a manhunt takes place amidst news of a bank robbery connected to the murder. This setup is both gripping and immediately engaging in ways most crime fiction never manages. The institutional context, the DEC’s stretched resources, the particular challenges of law enforcement in remote wilderness terrain, give the procedural elements of this thriller a grounding that feels genuinely true rather than generically contrived.
What Crook does with that grounding is the measure of his talent as a novelist. The Adirondacks are not simply depicted as the backdrop against which a crime is being investigated. They are an active participant in the story, creating the specific conditions and challenges that make the manhunt exceedingly difficult and dangerous, and the coordination between foresters and police consequential. Avalanche Lake and the cliffs above it are rendered with the specificity of someone who knows exactly what that terrain demands of the people moving through it, and that specificity gives every scene set in the wilderness an authority and a physical immediacy that keeps the reader oriented, engaged, and genuinely tense about what outcomes the environment itself dictates to the characters before the criminals get their chance.
Human dynamics are handled with verve and intelligence. As the foresters try to set their competitive natures aside and learn to work together, the ensuing flurry of press coverage strains these relationships, and personalities and motivations collide in ways that feel true to how people function inside institutional hierarchies under pressure. Stacy’s position as the crew chief gives the team dynamics an additional layer of complexity that Crook handles with the care of someone who understands that interactions between men and women in the workplace, even when that office is a cabin in the woods, are not just a plot point but a lived reality with specific professional, interpersonal, and romantic implications. Wayne’s status as a newcomer from Montana gives the reader a natural departure point: someone from out west adjusting to living in the east, where his role is yet to be determined. This enables the reader to experience the Adirondacks and the team for the first time alongside Wayne, without the contrivance of a disengaged protagonist who needs things explained to them.
Between a Rock . . . is a thrilling adventure with an emerging romance that earns its accolades through its detailed rendering of a world that its author genuinely knows. The Gansted Trilogy it launches promises to explore both the territory and the characters with the same authority, compassion, and commitment to truth that this opening volume so thoroughly demonstrates. This is arguably the most engaging novel set in the Adirondacks since James Fenimore Cooper wrote The Last of the Mohicans in 1826.
If you have been looking for a wilderness thriller that earns its stripes through genuine expertise and builds its tension from the specific physical and institutional reality of managing a hot pursuit in one of America’s most demanding wilderness environments, Between a Rock . . . by K. Eric Crook is the book you need. The novel is now available on Amazon.
