The Wall by Jeff Long Leaves You Hanging

The Wall is the latest in a group of books I've listened to (Audio CD) about mountain climbing, and it was one of the few fiction titles I was able to find. It seems natural that hard-core rock climbing would make a good setting for a thriller, where death is just a finger-slip away, yet I had a hard time finding many.

In The Wall, two aging rock climbers return to the site of their biggest glory, Yosemite's El Capitan, to reclimb a route they first pioneered in their youth. Both are hounded by the wreckage of their personal lives: one is a widower and the other is on the verge of divorce. They think that on this multi-day climb up 3000 feet, on the knife's edge of life and death, they will rediscover the meaning in their shattered lives.

Of course, things start off badly before they even get off the ground. A group of women climbers on a neighboring route have an accident, and the men's mission is threatened with being caught up in the rescue.

Long does a good job with the intricacies and technique of rock climbing. Some passages virtually made me dizzy with vertigo while others left me white-knuckled and clutching my steering wheel. The plot is well suited to the setting, with the tension ratcheting tighter as the climb progresses. Just about everything that could go wrong happens, often in unexpected ways, the way good thrillers should.

But ultimately, the ending is a bit of a let down. As what happened when I read one of Long's earliest novels (The Ascent, which is set on Mount Everest), the ending seemed to come out of nowhere, betraying the potential of what was being set up. I wondered if I missed a CD.

Even given that, I would still recommend The Wall to any fans of adventure sports, just so they don't mind being left hanging at the end.