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Dan Young and Maria Fischer have always had a very adversarial relationship. Dan is an attorney who represents various logging interests who fight for the right to harvest the old-growth redwood forests in Oregon. He strongly believes that this harvesting, if done properly, rejuvenates the forest by encouraging new growth. Maria is an environmental activist and attorney who is against cutting any of the old growth at all. As the book opens, Dan is about to give her $500,000 to purchase an old-growth forest. Much of that money has been provided by a Japanese company by the name of Amada, who hope to capitalize on the political overtones of making such a gesture. However, just after Dan hands Maria the money, she is robbed. Thus, Dan and Maria join forces to track the money down and discover how anyone knew about the top-secret transaction. In the course of their search, they face many dangerous situations. At one point, they are spying on a corporate enclave set in the forest and inadvertently discover a surreptitious operation involving the conversion of wood into fuel. The implications of this invention are huge, and the head of Amada, a man by the name of Kenji Yamada, will do anything to further his goal of introducing the process into the industry. His professional future is very much at stake, since his father-in-law is the CEO of the managing company located in Japan. And thatıs not to mention the billions of dollars that could be generated from the discovery. Meanwhile, there are a slew of people with varying agendas who are trying to either find out what Maria and Dan are up to or to fight the environmental cause. There is an extremist activist by the name of Corey Schneider who is on a crusade to destroy anyone that is in her way. Schneider is depicted as a total psychopath. Her way of dealing with anyone that thwarts her progress is to brutally torture them. She has several gruesome means at her disposal, none of which I particularly wanted to read about. This character was way over the top. A more subtle portrayal would have benefited the book. I would caution the delicate reader that there are innumerable graphically violent scenes throughout the book. As they pursue the leads that they have uncovered, Dan and Maria also find that they are attracted to one another at a personal level. Danı s wife, Tess, had died 2 years earlier, and he has been unable to move beyond his grief into a new relationship. Maria begins to unlock his emotional barriers, particularly since she gets along tremendously with his young son, Nate. However, Maria and Dan are often on opposite sides of issues; and that makes it difficult for them to make a commitment to one another. Dun does an excellent job at depicting this relationship and its various positive and negative facets. Dun also excels at building suspense and creates action scenes that put the reader at the edge of their seat. The pacing of the book is wonderful. Although lengthy, I found myself zooming through the narrative. Where I had difficulty with the book was in its resolution. It almost felt as if a different person wrote the last 50 pages of the book. Where Dun had done an excellent job earlier of weaving the various plot threads and creating some complex but well-constructed scenarios, the finale of the book was just one perilous situation after another. Suspense succeeds because the reader does not know the outcome. In At the Edge, the protagonists, particularly Maria, are placed in one life-threatening situation after another. By the third or fourth time that she manages to escape from death, Maria seems to be pretty much indestructible as is Dan, to a lesser degree. The whole element of credibility that Dun had built throughout the book went down the tubes. If you enjoy action-packed thrillers, this book is for you. There are at least 3 villains to keep you entertained. If you can suspend your disbelief for the resolution, then you are in for one heck of a ride!
Reviewed by Maddy Van Hertbruggen, November 2002
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