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Doiron does not disappoint in his most recent Mike Bowditch mystery, WIDOWMAKER, set in Maine as are all in the series. As the book opens, Bowditch finds a strange woman on his doorstep and finds her story even stranger. She asks for his help finding her son Adam, who she claims is Bowditch's half-brother. While Bowditch is skeptical of this claim, there is enough resemblance, both physical and behavioral, between Adam and Bowditch's father that he believes in the possibility. When the young man's mother explains that Adam has just been released from prison after being convicted of statutory rape for a relationship with a teenage girl, Bowditch is intrigued. When Bowditch is wounded on duty and told not to return to work until he recovers, he decides to take on the investigation.
Before he disappeared, Adam had been living and working amongst more serious sex offenders in a logging camp close to the area where Bowditch grew up and not far from the ski resort where his father once worked: Widowmaker. Bowditch heads up to the area to talk to Adam's old friends and the owner of the logging camp. He finds both quirky and menacing members of the community, along with a great deal of hatred for the ex-prisoners working at the logging camp. As in all of the books in the series, the resulting murder and mayhem is fast paced, grabbing the reader and making the pages fly by. In the end, the question of what happened to Adam is solved along with the question of his heritage.
The book is not all thrilling action, however. Bowditch is maturing through the series, and here he is introspective about his relationships with his father, with his girlfriend, and with the wildlife service for which he works. While at the start of the series it was not difficult to see Bowditch as a 20-something beginning his career as a game warden, the five or six years that have passed since then have made him seem old beyond his years. Bowditch's maturation has made it possible to read each book as a standalone, but it is even more rewarding to read the full series to see how Doiron has managed Bowditch's development.
Doiron writes beautifully of the landscape of the Maine wilderness and of its wildlife. A wolf-dog that plays an important role in this book is described lovingly while still recognizing its majestic wildness. The descriptions of the hidden, rural homesteads take the reader to the locations, and one's fingers and toes may tingle with the cold while reading this book. Plot, character, location – all are masterfully handled in this seventh in the series.
§ Sharon Mensing is the Head of School of Emerald Mountain School, an independent school in the mountains of Colorado, where she lives, reads, and enjoys the outdoors.
Reviewed by Sharon Mensing, June 2016
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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