Trespasser

I like characters who have a gift for making the wrong decision. Whether it's the guy who always picks trouble or the woman who just grabbed an opportunity and is digging in deeper and deeper to make it work, I find it all fascinating. Usually, the person making the wrong life choices is the bad guy, but here that guy is Mike Bowditch and he's a game warden in Maine, the guy trying to solve the crime and rescue the girl. Bowditch is hard work. He's insensitive and deliberately rude, self-righteous and a terrible boyfriend. He's got a chip on his shoulder that he refuses to deal with and he's prone to tunnel vision. He's dealing with some destructive off-roaders when he's called to haul a dead deer off the highway. When he arrives, the show more car that hit the animal is there, but both deer and woman are gone. A state trooper shows up and takes charge of the scene, sending Bowditch home. Bowditch leaves, but something about the situation bothers him and he finds himself going back to the scene and trying to find out what happened long after he's been told to leave it to the officers assigned to the case. He's also increasingly bothered by the scofflaw off-roaders and his attempts to deal with them grow more extreme.

This was a good, quick read where the plot made sense and the author created a vivid setting in coastal Maine during March, the "mud season". Bowditch is a wonderfully conceived character. I'd never want to know him personally, but he's great fun to follow through a book as he alienates everyone around him. I did want to yell at him a few times - self-righteousness is never a good trait and being inside his head could be aggravating. That said, the supporting characters were a bit thin, from his mentor who likes to call him "young feller" to the people Bowditch dealt with as part of his job - the hardscrabble locals were rendered as caricatures in a political ad, there was not much more than an outline to any of them. 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 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 show more 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

It's a scant few months since the action in Doiron's first mystery, The Poacher's Son, and Mike Bowditch is fighting the backlash of local opinion. It's mud season in Maine and the author skillfully turns this fact into an extremely evocative setting. (I'm still fighting the urge to run out to the porch and clean my boots.)

Doiron has written a very strong mystery, and at its heart is the complicated twenty-five-year-old Mike Bowditch. Mike is quite observant, at one point telling someone who's trying to pull the wool over his eyes, "You can't have it both ways." But he's also emotionally stunted, due in part to his childhood. This causes him to behave like a teenager occasionally, so it's an interesting-- and sometimes frustrating-- mix show more of intelligence, determination, and adolescent angst. He certainly keeps this reader on her toes.

And he will continue to do so. I've become hooked on Doiron's storytelling ability and his love of wild spaces, so I'm happy to report that it's on to the next book in this series. show less

In this a strong sequel to The Poachers Son. Doiron does a very good job of describing the Maine backwoods. Game Warden Mike Bowditch always seems to be on the edge of being fired but manages to hang on to his job. Fans of C J Box may want to check out this series.

In this second installment of the (mis)adventures of Maine Game Warden Mike Bowditch, Paul Doiron has given us a protagonist who is still recovering from the events in the first book of the series, The Poacher's Son. While this one could stand alone, I think readers will not grasp the full extent of Mike's inner turmoil, and the demons he is still wrestling with unless they've read the first one.

The book opens when Mike is called by a demanding and irate citizen who cannot understand why the warden must follow certain procedures before just barging off to "arrest those dirt-bags." At the same time, he is called to the scene of a car-deer encounter on a dark, foggy road (an not uncommon occurence in Maine), only to discover that the deer show more (presumably dead) is gone, and the driver of the vehicle is missing. When an obnoxious state trooper finally appears on the scene (he should have been the one to handle the case to begin with) and dismisses the missing driver with a remark that she was probably trying to avoid an OUI, Mike is outraged but too tired and muddy to stick around and challenge the other officer.

Once at home, the niggling clues that don't fit the trooper's assessment begin to bother him, and his rebellious and hard-headed nature once again kicks in. What happened to the girl? Is she OK? When he tries to find out, he meets roadblocks at every corner, while his inner radar continues to pick up vibes that something is definitely wrong. When the girl is found dead, the town and local cops are spooked by the resemblance to another murder seven years ago. From there on, we watch as Mike becomes a self-destructive one man posse bent on proving everyone else wrong.

Girlfriend Sarah has returned, but doesn't appear inclined to make their relationship more permanent until Mike agrees to counseling. Mike's boss Kathy has only a cameo appearance in this one, as do his old friends the retired game warden Charley and his wife Ora. Once again, the book is replete with lush descriptions of Maine's natural settings, its wildlife, and its citizens; it shows us again the very intense and necessary role the Game Wardens play in law enforcement in Maine. There are bodies, bad guys, suspects, and bosses galore. Doiron shows us the close relation between the local sheriffs, police departments, the state police and the game wardens. His portrait of Maine continues to enlighten and delight, and his mystery plotting is spot-on.

I do hope that Mike and Sarah can get their relationship back onto a positive track and begin moving forward. Mike is young (he's only been a warden for two years) and he has a lot to learn in the life department, but readers have become invested in getting this young man to adulthood, and look forward to the next novel in the series. show less

A sequel to the Poacher's Son, and the main character's anger once again puts him in self-destructive situations, which ultimately help him solve some crimes but decimate his relationships. There seems to be a new edge of cynicism regarding Maine's rural poor in this novel. This was especially evident in the audiobook version, in which the negative characters were portrayed with a (terrible!) Maine accent, while others spoke normally. I gave up after the first disk, and found the book much more palatable.

A friend mentioned that Paul Doiron, who writes a series with a game warden as hero much as does CJ Box, is wildly popular in Maine where this series takes place. So what the hell, I’ll try virtually anything. It’s pretty good once you get past the hunter vs the rest of us cultural baggage. Hunters apparently develop a certain paranoia for the rest of society whom they believe regard them as bambi killers so we are de rigueur treated to an explanation of why it’s important to have hunting so as to keep the populations reasonable and prevent starvation and road accidents. OK, I get it. Get over it.

Doiron’s hero is Mike Bowditch who develops a guilt complex after he failed to assist a young woman along the road who later is found show more dead. Whether it’s this crisis of conscience (not very well developed, I might add) or his relationship with his criminal father.

I would have rooted for Mike more had he not done so many brain-dead things like driving while under the influence of Vicodin prescribed for a hand injury and then stopping for a beer along the way even as his long-suffering girlfriend pleaded with him not to and to come right home. I suppose one could argue his foolish actions resulted from the Vicodin; nevertheless, it struck me as horribly irresponsible.

The lone hero, unappreciated and thwarted at every turn by his superiors, who manages to solve the puzzle despite rather than with-the-assistance-of-fellow-law-enforcement seems to be a formula that is beginning to wear a little thin. If you’ve read much CJ Box you will feel right at home. show less