Marilyn's Mystery Reads

Did you know that there’s really an invasion of feral hogs coming up the east coast from the south?  It has reached the woods of northern Maine, beginning to impact the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife and most particularly game warden Mike Bowditch.

Mike and his girlfriend Stacey, a biologist for the same state agency, are in the woods hoping to kill a sow and her piglets.  Feral hogs are huge, often weighing over two pounds and are extremely destructive to the environment, tearing up whole whole forests and polluting streams with their waste.  They also carry several diseases and parasites, which is why the U.S. Department of Agriculture has advised killing them on sight.

Stacey quickly dispatches the two sows in the group, and when she and Mike go over to get a closer look they find the remains of an infant buried in the mud.  Near the baby’s body the initials KC have been scratched into the bark of a tree.  Two days earlier, Mike had been at this very spot looking for the swine and neither the corpse nor the initials had been there.

Returning to the area the next day, Mike talks to the owner of the local convenience store, Eddie Fales.  Eddie tells him he knows everyone who lives in the area and that no one is living in the woods.  He sounds convincing, but still Mike decides to drive a bit farther down the road and check things out.  Just about at the end of the road there’s a house, almost abandoned-looking but showing tire marks that someone has tried to brush away from the driveway.  Calling the state police detective in charge of the case, he is told she’ll send a trooper in the morning to look into who might be living in the house and that Mike should stay away in the meantime.  But, Mike being Mike, he’s not able to leave the puzzling question unanswered.

Thus starts the harrowing adventure that is Knife Creek, the eighth in the Mike Bowditch mystery series.  Mike is a great protagonist, dedicated to his job, caring and compassionate to his friends, definitely not afraid to break a few rules when he thinks it’s necessary.  The latter is what got him into trouble early in his career, and it’s something he’s still dealing with–when to follow his superiors’ orders and when not to.  And in this novel there are plenty of occasions he decides to go his own way, for better or worse.

Paul Doiron has written another powerful book in this series, one that will keep you on edge until the very end.  The setting, the plot, and the characters are all first-rate; of course, by this time I expect nothing less from the author.  FYI, I’ve chosen Trespasser, the second Mike Bowditch novel, to represent the state of Maine in the course on New England mysteries I’m teaching in the fall at Brandeis University’s BOLLI Program.

You can read more about Paul Doiron at this website.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her website.