THE MIKE BOWDITCH PAGE: Paul Doiron's sleuth in his latest cases

PITCH DARK (Mike Bowditch #15)
PAUL DOIRON
Minotaur Books
$29.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Game Warden Mike Bowditch must chase down a cunning and dangerous fugitive in the North Maine Woods in this nail-biter of a thriller from Edgar Award-nominated author Paul Doiron, Pitch Dark.

Legendary bush pilot Josie Jonson can’t believe her luck when a skilled builder just happens to show up after she purchases land near Prentiss Pond. All Mark Redmond asks in return for building Josie’s dream cabin is that he be left alone to homeschool his 12-year-old daughter, Cady.

For Maine game warden investigator Mike Bowditch, the intensity of Redmond's secretiveness is troubling, especially in light of suspicious criminal activity being reported around the area―including rumors of an armed man offering large sums of money in exchange for the location of Redmond and Cady. Josie, though hesitant to violate the trust of her prized builder, eventually agrees to fly Mike and his father-in-law Charley Stevens to the secluded pond in an attempt to protect Redmond and Cady. But hours after landing, the trip takes a dark turn when they witness a horrific murder and are taken captive themselves.

Freeing himself, Mike is forced to set off through the impenetrable Maine forest towards Canada, alone and unarmed in pursuit of a mysterious fugitive. As he navigates a windblown landscape choked with deadfalls and blocked by swollen streams, he marvels at his enemy’s bush craft. The killer possesses skills surpassing his own, and Bowditch can't tell if he is the cat or the mouse in this dangerous game. Can Mike Bowditch stop his adversary in time to save the life of a young girl, or will he be forced to watch another innocent soul die?

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I'm going to address the elephant in the room now: appearances deceive in this set-up. Suspend your reflexive judgments.

Fifteenth in a procedural series I've read four of before this one. I'm glad to say I liked this one, too. I do now recall why I stopped reading them back when: There is not one likable woman except Mike's new wife, Stacey. It calls to my mind the series reads in the vein of Scot Horvath or Jack Reacher.

The set-up of this story, father and daughter living off the grid in the big fat middle of a chunk of Maine that even tracker-dude Bowditch says, "nah, gimme a plane ride," already has my spidey senses a-tingle. Add an armed stranger on the hunt for these two and, well, there's not much left to wonder is there?

Yes there is.

The twists and surprises kept me interested enough that I got snarled at about my reading lamp. I was expecting things thoroughly unpleasant to develop that didn't...whew...and not expecting things to develop that did, which was pleasantly surprising. I'm usually very averse to a child being put in jeopardy for amusement. I ws not really a fan here, but the issues surrounding the jeopardy are such that I felt less like this was a cheap ploy than a timely use of a horrifying reality.

By the end of the read, I was ready for the light to go off and sleep to come. It didn't for a half-hour (that's really long for me, I usually get to sleep in minutes) because I kept replaying some of the scenes in my mind. That is a good story! Keeps me up late, hard to do, then keeps me wakeful thinking about it.

Good work, Author Doiron. Recommended for procedural fans tired of the usual settings and attitudes based on arrogance and/or testosterone poisoning. Bowditch's 'tude is amply backed up, and earned, by his skills and his moral cdnter.

I hope he come looking for me after my kidnapping.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


DEAD MAN'S WAKE (Mike Bowditch #14)
PAUL DOIRON
Minotaur Books
$29.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: Game Warden Mike Bowditch's engagement party is interrupted by the discovery of a gruesome double murder in Dead Man's Wake, a new thriller from Edgar Award-winning author Paul Doiron.

On the evening of their engagement party, Maine Game Warden Investigator Mike Bowditch and Stacey Stevens witness what seems to be a hit-and-run speedboat crash on a darkened lake. When they arrive at the scene, their spotlight reveals a gruesome sight: a severed arm beneath the surface. As day breaks, the warden dive team recovers not one but two naked corpses: the dismembered man and the married woman with whom he was having an affair. Mike begins to suspect the swimmers' deaths were not a senseless accident but a coldly calculated murder. Alone among his fellow officers, Mike begins to sense the involvement of a trained professional, smarter and more dangerous than any enemy he has faced. As Mike and Stacey get closer to identifying the killer, their own lives are suddenly put on the line, leading to a confrontation designed to silence them forever.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Picking this series up after dropping it after Bad Little Falls (book #3), for no particular reason I can recall, I'm glad to say I got the hang of things again right quick.

Mike's in a place I wouldn't necessarily have predicted back then, what with planning to marry Stacey, but there we are. What hasn't changed much is this sarcastic, tangy dude's ability to offend everyone while doing far too good a job to get his smart mouth fired.

Stacey feels like a fairly generic character, if I'm honest, but then again who really cares about the sleuth's love interest? She doesn't simply exist to take up space like Bruno's lady-friends in Martin Walker's series; she has skills and uses them with Mike's investigation in this story. I remembered her name as Jamie, but either this is a different woman or my memory is wrong.

The plot starts out really strong, again as remembered from Author Doiron's earlier books. The events start weird and grisly early on. A lot of names are thrown at you from the start, which is often the case in series mysteries at this stage of their run. Here I suppose I'm running on the assumption that these characters are as I remember them. If they aren't, well...serves me right for being away more than ten books.

What the reader of series mysteries looks for, as far as I can see, is the sense that ma'at is served, that the Rightness of things is restored when the crime is solved. Murder is a gross insult to the body politic no matter who's killed; yes, even if it's someone who needs killin', responsibility must be apportioned or the precedent it sets is unthinkably dangerous. That's what I felt about this particular murder, TBH. Understandable that someone taking your spouse away from you would piss you off; but then again, why was said spouse in play, exactly? And no one's gonna support the old-fashioned sense that a man's wife is his, as in his property, in the twenty-first century.

Maine's as much of a character as any human was. The atmospherics will either immerse you in the setting (me) or make you a crazy person. Particularly prominent in this outing is information on boating that will quite possibly make some wish for an acute drought to dry up the whole state. Maine's unusually powerful wardens...power of arrest?! really?...make this series a procedural of the sort I enjoy. It's detailed without feeling, to me at least, dense and chewy. It doesn't hurt that I feel Mike's spiny, acerbic nature makes him a kindred spirit. Stacey is detailed enough to give me the slightly uncomfortable feeling she sees herself as "riding herd" on her man. I don't know this; she's developed over eleven books since I met her in book three. If indeed this is the same woman....

You already know I picked up the next one, so my vote is in. Good series.