Braving Rattlesnakes and Cliffs to Write a Crime Thriller

How an ‘adventurous’ hike allowed me to finally finish a book.

It’s easy to panic when you realize that a five-foot rattlesnake is swimming a few feet away from you.

My wife and I had agreed to let a good friend of ours take us on a hike through the wilds of eastern Oregon. The hike itself, we’d been assured as we loaded up the SUV with water, provisions, and a very friendly dog, was an easy one — no more than a mile along a well-defined trail, with a famous hot spring to plunge into at the very end.

In order to reach the hiking trail, we took Highway 95 to the flyspeck town of Jordan Valley, near the Idaho-Oregon border. From there, we turned onto a dirt road for another thirty miles of bumpy driving, until we arrived at the Owyhee Canyon rim, where rocky switchbacks led to the valley floor far below. This was the height of summer, and we could feel the day’s rising heat pushing against the SUV’s windows.

If this sounds like the setup for one of those rural crime thrillers where people end up running for their lives through the wilderness, rest assured that I had that exact thought. My previous book, Boise Longpig Hunting Club, featured bounty hunter Jake Halligan and his arms-dealer sister Frankie doing their best to evade a…