Action & Adventure
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The Guide: A novel
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The best-selling author of The River returns with a heart-racing thriller about a young man who is hired by an elite fishing lodge in Colorado, where he uncovers a plot of shocking menace amid the natural beauty of sun-drenched streams and forests.
"Peter Heller is the poet laureate of the literary thriller." -Michael Koryta, New York Times best-selling author of Those Who Wish Me Dead
Kingfisher Lodge, nestled in a canyon on a mile and a half of the most pristine river water on the planet, is known by locals as "Billionaire's Mile" and is locked behind a heavy gate. Sandwiched between barbed wire and a meadow with a sign that reads "Don't Get Shot!" the resort boasts boutique fishing at its finest. Safe from viruses that have plagued America for years, Kingfisher offers a respite for wealthy clients. Now it also promises a second chance for Jack, a return to normalcy after a young life filled with loss. When he is assigned to guide a well-known singer, his only job is to rig her line, carry her gear, and steer her to the best trout he can find.
But then a human scream pierces the night, and Jack soon realizes that this idyllic fishing lodge may be merely a cover for a far more sinister operation. A novel as gripping as it is lyrical, as frightening as it is moving, The Guide is another masterpiece from Peter Heller.
"Peter Heller is the poet laureate of the literary thriller." -Michael Koryta, New York Times best-selling author of Those Who Wish Me Dead
Kingfisher Lodge, nestled in a canyon on a mile and a half of the most pristine river water on the planet, is known by locals as "Billionaire's Mile" and is locked behind a heavy gate. Sandwiched between barbed wire and a meadow with a sign that reads "Don't Get Shot!" the resort boasts boutique fishing at its finest. Safe from viruses that have plagued America for years, Kingfisher offers a respite for wealthy clients. Now it also promises a second chance for Jack, a return to normalcy after a young life filled with loss. When he is assigned to guide a well-known singer, his only job is to rig her line, carry her gear, and steer her to the best trout he can find.
But then a human scream pierces the night, and Jack soon realizes that this idyllic fishing lodge may be merely a cover for a far more sinister operation. A novel as gripping as it is lyrical, as frightening as it is moving, The Guide is another masterpiece from Peter Heller.
Editorial Reviews
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A USA Today Book Not to Miss • A LitHub Most Anticipated Book •A CrimeRead Novel You Should Read • An Alta Best Book • A Veranda Magazine Best Book • An AARP Hot New Novel
"Heller writes like a veteran outdoorsman influenced by Cormac McCarthy and Jon Krakauer… Masterclasses in the unsettling."
-Lauren Daley, Boston Globe
"In his new mystery, author Peter Heller pulls off a rare balancing act once again: He gives us fast-paced action and intrigue, interspersed with closely observed, reflective nature writing. Speed up for the crime-solving, slow down for the Zen."
-Julia Rubin, Associated Press
"The Guide is a literary work and a paean to fishing, as inspiring as A River Runs Through It… Poetic… Engaging… The Guide is a beautifully written book, a tribute to Colorado, its bounty and its ability to heal the soul."
-Sandra Dallas, Denver Post
"Stunning... Stunning descriptions... Precise and evocative... The Guide is an excellent book, one to sink into and enjoy in one sitting, if you can. Readers will be transported, and find themselves just as wrapped in the mystery as Jack himself."
-Fiona Cook, Mystery and Suspense Guide
"A devastating indictment of the lengths to which people of extraordinary means will go to protect themselves... The simple, sensorial beauty of Heller's writing about the natural world... is the true soul of the book."
-Lisa Henricksson, AirMail
"Mr. Heller's descriptions of nature and fishing are Hemingwayesque, and he's also good at writing about people-their passions, impulses and ethical boundaries."
-Tom Nolan, Wall St...
"Heller writes like a veteran outdoorsman influenced by Cormac McCarthy and Jon Krakauer… Masterclasses in the unsettling."
-Lauren Daley, Boston Globe
"In his new mystery, author Peter Heller pulls off a rare balancing act once again: He gives us fast-paced action and intrigue, interspersed with closely observed, reflective nature writing. Speed up for the crime-solving, slow down for the Zen."
-Julia Rubin, Associated Press
"The Guide is a literary work and a paean to fishing, as inspiring as A River Runs Through It… Poetic… Engaging… The Guide is a beautifully written book, a tribute to Colorado, its bounty and its ability to heal the soul."
-Sandra Dallas, Denver Post
"Stunning... Stunning descriptions... Precise and evocative... The Guide is an excellent book, one to sink into and enjoy in one sitting, if you can. Readers will be transported, and find themselves just as wrapped in the mystery as Jack himself."
-Fiona Cook, Mystery and Suspense Guide
"A devastating indictment of the lengths to which people of extraordinary means will go to protect themselves... The simple, sensorial beauty of Heller's writing about the natural world... is the true soul of the book."
-Lisa Henricksson, AirMail
"Mr. Heller's descriptions of nature and fishing are Hemingwayesque, and he's also good at writing about people-their passions, impulses and ethical boundaries."
-Tom Nolan, Wall St...
Readers Top Reviews
Bee from Northant
The story was well developed. It was topical - abuse of power, corruption of power
Rebecca CopelandB
I’m so sad that this book is over. Please tell me he’s got another one coming. No one can write about the outdoors like Peter Heller. Couldn’t put this book down.
Kindle Rebecca C
This has been the most fascinating book I’ve read in years. Peter Heller has a rare talent to connect the reader to raw emotions we often keep hidden. Although I bought this book in Kindle form I now must own a physical copy as it is easier to go back and reread the parts that have touched my very soul.
Perry GannDavid W
I am saturated with reading during Covid, and perhaps that is why I found this book very dumb. The plot was to far fetched to believe. The characters lacked believable personalities (the good guys too candy sweet, and the bad guys dumb and evil) and you could tell the home run pitch were the final chapters of slam dunk suspense. It felt like watching an old cowboy movie. Don't even get me started on romance. I wrote better prose in my eighth grade love notes. Sorry Peter, I really have enjoyed some of you other books.
island readerChri
The book has nice descriptive prose but just plods along. There is so much soothing description that it dilutes any suspense that might have built. It's an OK plot, but I felt that I had read the book before. If not for the Covid references I would have sworn I'd already read it. The ease with which the characters get out of trouble is just too pat. It was a pleasant read but I don't give it a "must read" recommendation.
Short Excerpt Teaser
CHAPTER ONE
That first afternoon he dumped his duffel and pack on the rag rug in the cabin and changed fast into nylon shorts. He put a packet of split shot and a small fly box in the breast pockets of his shirt, then pulled the five-weight Winston rod out of the truck and pieced it together. His wading boots were drying in the back seat and he tugged on wool socks and laced the boots, and slung the lanyard cord over his head that dangled nippers, tippet, forceps, Gink. It was just warm enough and he liked best to go without waders. The water would be icy but he was on his own: he wouldn't have to stand in the water for hours beside a casting client. He'd be moving fast.
He did. He began at the big dark sliding pool below the cabin and worked upstream. He could see a hatch of mayflies coming off the slow water beside the shore. Blue-winged olives. He always loved how they rose from an eddy in deep shadow like animated snowflakes and flew up into sunlight and flared in a haze of soft sparks. He crouched on the bank and turned over a rock the size of a brick in the shallows and the silted underside was covered with the pupae of caddis, almost like a crusting of cloves. A stone fly also crawled over the cobble in the unexpected air. Due diligence. He'd fished the mountains of Colorado all his life, and he had a good idea what bugs would be where. He tied on a dry and a dropper, a tufty elk hair stimulator on top and a bead-head pheasant tail on the bottom. Clients loved fishing this rig and he did, too.
He stepped into the icy water, caught his breath at the first clinch of cold. And then he waded in up to his knees and began to cast.
•
The rhythm of it always soothed him. Laying the line out straight over dark water, the blip of the weighted dropper, the dry fly touching just after, the-
The tuft of elk hair barely touched and the surface broke. The lightest tug and he set the hook and the rod bent and quivered and a colossal brown trout leapt clear of the water into a spray of sunlight. Jesus. It splashed down and ran straight upstream and he let the fish take the line to the reel and he heard the whir of the clicking drag and he ran after it. He splashed through shallows, slipped, stumbled, half his body in the water, didn't care if he spooked everyone in the big pool. Somehow he tightened down the drag knob on the reel just a little as he went-it was sleek this brown, all muscle, and the flash of gold as it hit the air was better than any treasure, God. He ran and fought the fish. Ten minutes, twenty? Who knew. He lost track of time, and of himself. Forgot it was he, Jack, who fished, whose limbs and hands acted without thought. He forgot his name or that he owned one, and for the first time in many months he was as close as he could come to something like joy.
He was almost under the bridge when he raised the rod high and brought the exhausted trout in the last few feet and unshucked the net from his belt and slid it under this beauty and cradled her in the mesh. She was a species of gold that no jeweler had ever encountered-deeper, darker, rich with tones that had depth like water. He talked to her the whole time, You're all right, you're all right, thank you, you beauty, almost as he had talked to himself at the shack, and he wet his left hand and cupped her belly gently and slipped the barbless hook from her lip and withdrew the net.
He crouched with the ice water to his hips and held her quietly into the current until half his body was numb. Held and held her who knew how long and watched her gills work, and she mostly floated free between his guiding fingers, and he felt the pulsing touch of her flanks as her tail worked and she idled. And then she wriggled hard and darted and he lost her shape to the green shadows of the stones.
Thank you, he said again after her but it was not so much said as an emotion released; released like the fish to the universe. He straightened. He was almost under the plank-and-timber bridge and he looked up and he saw the camera.
•
It was a black fish-eye lens fixed to the main beam. A half bubble three inches across. Glassy like nothing else out here, inanimate and silent. Was someone watching him? Should he be bothered? He was. Kurt hadn't mentioned any cameras. He splashed his face and glanced up at it again. Was it menacing? It was just a camera. But he felt violated. Because he had so given himself-to the river, the fish, the first afternoon on a new stretch of water-because he had, for the first time maybe since the death of his friend Wynn, allowed himself to feel a shiver of peace. He was pissed that he had thought himself completely alone and someone might have witnessed it all.
Fuck it. He had his hand half-li...
That first afternoon he dumped his duffel and pack on the rag rug in the cabin and changed fast into nylon shorts. He put a packet of split shot and a small fly box in the breast pockets of his shirt, then pulled the five-weight Winston rod out of the truck and pieced it together. His wading boots were drying in the back seat and he tugged on wool socks and laced the boots, and slung the lanyard cord over his head that dangled nippers, tippet, forceps, Gink. It was just warm enough and he liked best to go without waders. The water would be icy but he was on his own: he wouldn't have to stand in the water for hours beside a casting client. He'd be moving fast.
He did. He began at the big dark sliding pool below the cabin and worked upstream. He could see a hatch of mayflies coming off the slow water beside the shore. Blue-winged olives. He always loved how they rose from an eddy in deep shadow like animated snowflakes and flew up into sunlight and flared in a haze of soft sparks. He crouched on the bank and turned over a rock the size of a brick in the shallows and the silted underside was covered with the pupae of caddis, almost like a crusting of cloves. A stone fly also crawled over the cobble in the unexpected air. Due diligence. He'd fished the mountains of Colorado all his life, and he had a good idea what bugs would be where. He tied on a dry and a dropper, a tufty elk hair stimulator on top and a bead-head pheasant tail on the bottom. Clients loved fishing this rig and he did, too.
He stepped into the icy water, caught his breath at the first clinch of cold. And then he waded in up to his knees and began to cast.
•
The rhythm of it always soothed him. Laying the line out straight over dark water, the blip of the weighted dropper, the dry fly touching just after, the-
The tuft of elk hair barely touched and the surface broke. The lightest tug and he set the hook and the rod bent and quivered and a colossal brown trout leapt clear of the water into a spray of sunlight. Jesus. It splashed down and ran straight upstream and he let the fish take the line to the reel and he heard the whir of the clicking drag and he ran after it. He splashed through shallows, slipped, stumbled, half his body in the water, didn't care if he spooked everyone in the big pool. Somehow he tightened down the drag knob on the reel just a little as he went-it was sleek this brown, all muscle, and the flash of gold as it hit the air was better than any treasure, God. He ran and fought the fish. Ten minutes, twenty? Who knew. He lost track of time, and of himself. Forgot it was he, Jack, who fished, whose limbs and hands acted without thought. He forgot his name or that he owned one, and for the first time in many months he was as close as he could come to something like joy.
He was almost under the bridge when he raised the rod high and brought the exhausted trout in the last few feet and unshucked the net from his belt and slid it under this beauty and cradled her in the mesh. She was a species of gold that no jeweler had ever encountered-deeper, darker, rich with tones that had depth like water. He talked to her the whole time, You're all right, you're all right, thank you, you beauty, almost as he had talked to himself at the shack, and he wet his left hand and cupped her belly gently and slipped the barbless hook from her lip and withdrew the net.
He crouched with the ice water to his hips and held her quietly into the current until half his body was numb. Held and held her who knew how long and watched her gills work, and she mostly floated free between his guiding fingers, and he felt the pulsing touch of her flanks as her tail worked and she idled. And then she wriggled hard and darted and he lost her shape to the green shadows of the stones.
Thank you, he said again after her but it was not so much said as an emotion released; released like the fish to the universe. He straightened. He was almost under the plank-and-timber bridge and he looked up and he saw the camera.
•
It was a black fish-eye lens fixed to the main beam. A half bubble three inches across. Glassy like nothing else out here, inanimate and silent. Was someone watching him? Should he be bothered? He was. Kurt hadn't mentioned any cameras. He splashed his face and glanced up at it again. Was it menacing? It was just a camera. But he felt violated. Because he had so given himself-to the river, the fish, the first afternoon on a new stretch of water-because he had, for the first time maybe since the death of his friend Wynn, allowed himself to feel a shiver of peace. He was pissed that he had thought himself completely alone and someone might have witnessed it all.
Fuck it. He had his hand half-li...
