The Labor Day weekend has been a good one for Bad Little Falls. The Maine Sunday Telegram is out with its review today, and it's a corker. Reviewer Frank O. Smith does a particularly fine job of characterizing the story (that's harder than it looks with book reviews):
As Bowditch steps from one messy entanglement to another, Roberta Rhine, the stony-faced county sheriff, remarks, "I'm beginning to understand why your superiors transferred you Down East."
The story turns around two frozen men found at night in the middle of the blizzard. One is dead; the other horribly frostbitten. It's becomes quickly apparent that they are local drug dealers. The dead one has a Maori-style tattoo on his face; the other is brother to the beautiful but ill-fated Jamie Sewall, employee-of-the-month at McDonald's in Machias.
Bowditch, lonely and painfully estranged from a former girlfriend, is smitten from the moment he sets eyes on Jamie. She sucks Bowditch deep into the twisted torment of her life and those of a half-dozen other central characters.
Smith calls the book "superbly crafted intrigue" and he says it "will keep you guessing to the perilous end." I appreciate the kind words. And as for his predictions of what might be coming in book four, I will only say that he is one hell of a good guesser.