James A. McLaughlinReviews

SO GOOD. So glad to read a genuinely good book after a lot of less satisfying ones. I hope this guy writes another one soon. I think this was his first. He reminds me of Charles Frazier but it might have just been the setting mostly, and also the solitary male main character becoming one with nature etc etc. What a great book.

A better than average “mystery “ ( okay thriller, maybe) it’s blend of the natural world with intense human violence was a bit much for me. One minute I’m thinking about cicadas and mushroom hunters and the next minute the cast of deliverance drops in for a torture party. The sexual violence is at leSt offstage, but it made me uncomfortable to? However, held my interest and overall a good read

This book provides a wonderful combination of observations on the natural world, a flawed but likeable main character, a complex plot, and erudite writing. It contains a diverse assortment of topics that the author skillfully weaves together into a cohesive story: old growth forests, ecology, herpetology, bear behavior, hunting dogs, federal and local law enforcement, drug cartels, even ghillie suits!

Rice, the main character, originally a biologist from the desert southwest, has become caretaker of a wilderness preserve in the Appalachians. He is trying to start a new life under a pseudonym to elude a Mexican drug cartel. When he discovers carcasses of black bears on the preserve, paws severed, and gallbladders removed, he attempts to entrap the poachers, putting him up against a black-market ring. Rice is edgy, easily startled by the animals that surround him, but has a wry sense of humor about it. He develops an affection for the natural habitat and comes to appreciate the solitude, though it occasionally affects his state of mind.

“The giant trees were like dormant gods, vibrating with something he couldn’t name, not quite sentience, each one different from the others, each telling its own centuries-long story. On the forest floor, chestnut logs dead since the blight had rotted into chest-high berms soft with thick mosses, whispering quietly. Something called out and he turned to face a looming tulip tree, gnarled and bent like an old man, hollowed out by rot, lightning, ancient fires. His skin tingled.”

The people of the area are much more nuanced than the usual stereotypes. The contrasts between wealthy and impoverished people add another dimension to the story. For example, the preserve is owned by a family’s charitable foundation, and some locals resent that the natural resources cannot be used to support the regional economy.

I found this book entertaining and educational. It will appeal to readers of mysteries and thrillers that like a complex storyline, appreciate richly detailed writing, and have an affinity for the natural world. If you want non-stop action and lots of twists and turns, look elsewhere.

"Bearskin" is a rare find: a literary thriller that is as lyrical as it is muscular.

Instead of choosing between writing a literary book about how a man can surrender himself to the dark sentience of an ancient forest and walk out more himself than he was before or a thriller about a man deeply maimed by violence who, although living an almost invisible life in the wilds, knows his past will catch up with him, James McLaughlinhas written a book that is both a literary achievement and a page-turning, viscerally realistic thriller.

Two things caught and kept my attention in throughout this book: the development of Rice Moore, the man at the heart of the story and the sometimes total immersion into the ancient Appalachian forest. Either one would have been reason enough to read this book. Together they became compelling.

Rice Moore is a great creation. Recent acts of extreme violence against him and by him have left him emotionally scarred and subject to fugues states and hallucinations. A solitary man who no longer entirely trusts himself to play well with others, he seeks isolation, partly to hide from his enemies and partly to avoid people. Alone in the forest, feeling its pulse next to his own, his inability to let go of his territoriality or his instinct for violence, repeatedly draws him into conflict with the people around him.

Yet this isn't a one-man-triumphs-against-the-world sort of story. Moore is losing his mind. His fugue states, his obsession with protecting the black bears on the estate he is warden of and his personal ghosts, lead him down a path where he literally puts on another skin and enters a different kind of consciousness. James McLaughlin's ability to help me experience this altering of states as something real and raw was deeply impressive.

Even though "Bearskin" is as fast-paced and propulsive as a thriller needs to be, McLaughlin is able to incorporate the forest and its fauna and fauna as a deeply experienced part of the story. Ecology is more than a plot device or a scientific concept here, it is about understanding our place in the world and its rhythms.

In addition to these two strong themes, McLaughlin gives us an insight into the poaching of black bears, the vengeance of the Mexican drug cartels and the rules and rituals of outlaw motorcycle clubs and an up-close experience of violence that is hard to look away from.

I recommend the audiobook version of "Bearskin" as MacLeod Andrews' narration enhanced my experience of the book.

Click on the SoundCloud link below to hear a sample.

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Brutal, beautiful prose, a primal and almost phantasmagoric view of nature.

I must have seriously gotten the wrong impression of this book going in, expecting a nature-themed adventure with bucolic scenes of scientific inquiry, reflection, and personal growth. Instead, the book is much darker, extremely violent, and frenetic, with the main character seemingly in a fever dream for much of the story. The book opened with a prison shanking scene, and I nearly dumped it right then, and perhaps I should have, but I continued to the end. I recognize that the book is well-written and tightly-constructed, but not at all what I'd hoped for.

[Bearskin] is the first novel by James McLaughlin. It's a thriller and a mystery, a story of nature and of sinister surveillance and mayhem. Rice Moore, the main character, is under considerable duress, much of it the result of his own actions, but he's steadfast and loyal to the end.

Much of the action takes place at the Turk Mountain Preserve in western Virginia, described as "a thousand acres of primary forest passed over by eighteenth and nineteenth century loggers and protected by the Traver family ever since." A continuing problem is that some locals resent that the property is closed to them, hunting prohibited. It's full of prime timber—first-growth timber—that in the minds of local loggers and sawyers should be harvested. Rice has only recently assumed the mantle of the Preserve's caretaker, the solitary observer of the habitat and its flora and fauna, the lone guardian, the face of the Preserve and the family that owns it in the surrounding communities.

One morning, Rice spots a figure moving through the woods; it's a one-armed man shouldering a backpack and hoping for a drink of water. He explains his presence as a mushroom hunter, telling Rice he'd picked mushrooms on the neighboring national forest, not the Preserve.

  "They's somethin' to show ye." The man turned at the waist and jerked his head back the way he'd come, back up the mountain. "Sup thar."
  "What is it?"
  "Y'orta see't y'sef."

The mushroom picker leads Rice up the mountain to a headless body, swarming with bluebottle and greenbottle flies.

  "Done skint this'n" the mushroom picker said. "Ah seen more'n a dozen. Some's skint. Most times he don't take nothin' but they hands and they galls." He began to pace back and forth under the tree, muttering to himself… Rice stared, struck by the human resemblance. After a few moments he felt able to speak.
  "It's a bear?"
  The man started, as if he'd forgotten about Rice.
  "S'bar." He spoke through it teeth, his voice strange, lower and harsher than before. He seemed angry. "She-bar."

Then he vanishes into the forest.

What is the caretaker to do? Call the game warden? The sheriff? We know, from a brief prologue, that Rice has a checkered past, back in a Mexican prison. And we know he fears retribution "with prejudice" should his whereabouts, even in the backwoods of Virginia, become known. He's got to go it alone.

There's more. Oh, there's a lot more.

Both of my thumbs are pointing up.

I was given this book, which is not at all my usual fare. It was fairly well-written, well-paced, and with pretty good character development. The ending, though, was too sudden and not explained well enough. A device of alternating chapters: Virginia and then Mexico, would have worked better to my mind, although I guess the people who determine the Edgar Award for best first novel might not agree with me.½

Combine a cast that includes tree-hugging biologists, a man escaping from Mexican drug cartels, and red-neck hunters from Virginia, this well-deserves the 2019 Edgar Award for First Novel. Its tense up to nearly the last minute as a caretake for a private reserve tries to track down who is hunting bear for the paws and gall bladders. I thought I had the resolution figured out but I was very wrong.

I don't read many thrillers, and I doubt I've given many 5 stars to those I've read, but BEARSKIN is special. The writing is descriptive, captivating, and succinct. Every word seems to be there for a specific purpose and the language is sometimes beautiful, sometimes harsh. The reader gets drawn into Rice Moore's world and into his mind. This book is not only for readers that enjoy a "what will happen next" storyline, but a novel that is told in an extraordinary way.

Rice Moore gets a job to help preserve a forest reserve in the mountains of Virginia. There has been a lot of poaching of bears to get their gall bladders and paws used for different purposes in Asia. Rice is challenged to protect them but he also has a criminal past in prior times along the Mexican border. that will come back to haunt him.. This is a gritty book supported by the author's vast knowledge of outdoor life and guns. Well worth reading.

2019 Edgar Award for Best First Novel
Review of the Ecco paperback (2018) edition.

I didn't get through all of the 2019 Edgar Award nominees for Best First Novel, but Bearskin definitely stood out for its atmospheric woodlands setting and its two leads, so I wasn't surprised that it was the Edgar Award winner on April 25, 2019.

It didn't quite break into 5-star territory as the ending felt a bit too rushed, with some of the retribution taking place off the page, but otherwise this was very compelling suspenseful reading. I'll certainly be interested in James McLaughlin's follow-up novel.

This book just didn't work for me. Too many half told stories, half formed plot lines.½

Wonderful debut novel. The author creates a nature treatise wrapped in a suspense story. The language generates the atmosphere and the perfect word is well chosen; where else have you seen umwelt or minatory in a novel lately? Don't know how I missed this when it came out last year, great read.

Highly recommended. Beautifully written, skillfully plotted, psychologically complex. At one point the tension was so intense that I had to put it down for a while. I was bereft when I finished it.

I continue to be amazed at the quality of the writing from so many debut authors. This book is Mr. McLaughlin's first, and it as perfect a thriller as you will come across. The writing is literate, and the descriptions of the beautiful Appalachian mountains in and around the state of Virginia are breathtaking. And at the same time McLaughlin manages to pen a thriller that will keep you tearing up the pages as you race to get through the book. In this book we meet Rice Monroe, a man with a very colourful past, and a man on the run from some very serious bad guys. As his job is park warden, he takes it very seriously when he spots poached bears on his forest preserve.The bears are gutted and all their paws are cut off. Rice knows its being done for blackmarket bear parts which are sold to people in Asia for a very tidy sum. Little does he realize that poached bear parts leads to the end of his anonymity and the discovery of his whereabouts, and he is trying to stay alive in the dark and brooding forests of Turpin Mountains, where his survival skills as well as his knowledge of the mountain gives him a little advantage in his fight for his life. Highly recommended.