Paul Doiron

I like Paul Doiron's Mike Bowditch mysteries because I love stories about sparsely inhabited areas and because I get to watch an impulsive, heart-on-his-sleeve, young man solve mysteries and grow up along the way. He is very...very... slowly learning that he doesn't know better than everyone else, and it's an attitude that needs to change before it kills him.

Bad Little Falls, like the other books in the series, gives readers an excellent feel for the wilds of Maine and the show more independent-minded, insular people who live there. As Doiron states at the end of the book, "No law enforcement organization in Maine has suffered more deaths in the line of duty than the Warden Service." That statement alone gives readers a better perspective on what Doiron's main character has to face.

Reading about an impulsive, know-it-all, looking-for-love, young man could wear a person out, so it's good that the cast also contains folks like veteran bush pilot Charley Stevens, "gimlet-eyed lesbian" county sheriff Roberta Rhine, and Lucas, the strange little boy who fills his notebooks with all the words he will not say and all the thoughts he refuses to share. In many ways, Lucas is my favorite character in Bad Little Falls. He can provide a little light humor when he ponders the subject of "Abnormal [Abominable] Snowmen," and he can also give you the shivers or even break your heart.

Populated with interesting characters, this solid mystery has plenty of misdirection to keep you guessing. It also provides a harrowing portrait of an area in this country that most of us know very little about. I enjoy gaining knowledge with my fiction. That's why I'll keep coming back to Mike Bowditch deep in the Maine woods. show less

This is one of those series where the central character hooks you right from the start and you always want to be reading something with them in it. Mike Bowditch is one of those guys. Young, impulsive, a troubled past but a skilled game warden with amazing instincts and detective skills. Instincts and skills which tend to get him into trouble when he strays out of the lines of his warden duties.

Trespasser is just as riveting as the first book in the series, The Poacher’s Son. Author Paul show more Doiron makes the Maine woods scarily real and the danger Bowditch finds himself – puts himself? – in nerve-racking and believable. In addition to his search for a missing woman, Bowditch has to deal with the usual folks breaking the rules and the ever-present dissatisfaction he feels from his superiors

A fast-paced, enthralling mystery that will put you right in the middle of the dangerous forest and take you along with Mike Bowditch for an adventure that may well end with him losing his life.

A great continuation to what promises to be a very satisfying series, and one I hope lasts for a long time. I voluntarily leave this review and all opinions are my own. show less

Mike Bowditch is a game warden in Maine. He's responsible for making sure that hunters and those partaking in sport are doing so according to the state's regulations. He loves his job even though it has recently cost him his relationship after she couldn't deal with the isolation of the work and lack of money.

To make matters worse a police officer has been murdered in a remote hunting camp where his estranged father lives. A new company has purchased a huge swath of land and intends to evict show more the poor inhabitants and develop it.

In a shocking turn of events, it seems that Mike's father might have been involved. He beats up the police officer who arrests him and escapes into the Maine wilderness. Mike's father is a complicated figure in his life. A drunk and an abuser through his childhood and a disinterested stranger in his young adulthood, Mike still finds himself hoping to gain is approval. And being on the receiving end of a desperate call for help, Mike believes his father must be innocent. But if he hopes to save him, he'll need to be quick about it as every law officer in Maine is hot on his trail.

This really isn't my genre but I'm here because I love Maine as a setting and in that area the author delivers. I loved learning about the work of a game warden and experiencing the drama of small town life.

That being said, I had a couple of issues with this book that really took me out of it. The biggest one was the extremely troubling fact that the primary villain of the novel in a twenty year old indigenous woman who is presented by the book as being promiscuous and sexually aggressive and seems to compulsively lie about being raped.

I would take issue with any character in media making a false claim of rape as this is actually very uncommon and representation of this kind only leads to real women being disbelieved. But the fact that it is an indigenous woman, a population that is already disproportionately sexualized and victimized is really reprehensible.

But even more unforgiveable is the way this book establishes Brenda Dean as a twelve year old girl who is essentially a slave at a hunting camp with the demeaning name of B.J. given to her by the many male predators in her life. The author doesn't really bother to develop her as a character, but he does take time to have full grown men, including her father, sexualize and objectify her. There's simply no excuse for this disgusting portrayal and frankly, I believe Brenda! Suffice it to say, this book isn't passing the Aila Test.

The other big problem I had with this book was the main character's motivation. When the book opens, he hasn't spoken to his father in two years. Through flashbacks we witness the abuse he endured as a child and the callous indifference his father has to him later. It's not clear at all why he believes his father is innocent and there is absolutely no obvious reason he would risk the career that he chose over his girlfriend for the man who has done nothing but hurt him.

Mike also seems remarkably unmoved when he discovers his father has been having sex with Brenda, a girl young enough to be his daughter whom he's know about as long and far more intimately than his own son. He's grossed out by this reveal, but only slightly and at least some of that disgust comes from his personal disdain for Brenda herself.

In the end, the final twist that actually his father is guilty of the murder which he carried out because Brenda told him one of the men raped her is frankly hard to believe. The book presents this man as a slut who runs through women regularly. But he's so in love with Brenda that he kills two men and then two more men (whom he'd been working alongside for decades) in order to cover up the crime. He then attempts to kill another man and kidnaps his own son to use as a hostage. After all this, when he learns that Brenda is dead, he immediately shoots himself.

It's just as bizarrely out of character as the original murder was and isn't very convincing or satisfying. show less

Paul Doiron's Mike Bowditch series is one of my favorite mystery series, mainly because he does such a great job of creating the world of upstate Maine and the conflict between the naturalist and encroachment of big city life. I had read the later books, and then went back and read this first book. It is easily the best book in the series, and starts the ongoing psychological conflict that Mike has between living the life of his ne'er do well father who subsidizes his subsistence living with show more poaching game. To set himself apart from his father's history, Mike becomes a game warden and spends his career dealing with characters much like his father. He is a very likeable characters with some flaws but a good heart and a large love of nature and animals in general, which I can relate to. It's not a typical mystery series as it is not an urban tale, and the conflicts take place in the back woods and remote areas of a largely unpopulated state. show less