The AP Says Massacre Pond Is "Superbly Well-Written"

Edgar-winner Bruce DeSilva has reviewed Massacre Pond for the Associated Press, and he has high praise for the book:

Doiron fashions a tense and clever mystery peopled by characters you could well meet by wandering into the wrong Down East bar. As usual, he peppers his superbly well-written yarn with evocative descriptions of the state he and Bowditch call home, including this passage about nightfall in the forest:

"A stillness surrounds you that makes every stray sound — even an acorn dropping, every chipmunk peep — seem overly loud. The birds go quiet. Sometimes you'll hear a distant crashing that makes your heart stop; a buck has caught your scent and gone leaping off into the brush before you can spot the white flag of his tail."

When you have a new book out, you hope for the best and prepare for the worst. So far Massacre Pond is exceeding my hopes.

A Q&A with the Houston Chronicle

There's an interview up today with me on the Houston Chronicle's Bookish blog. This is just a small part of an extensive Q&A I did with Mike Yawn, a professor at Sam Houston State University, and I'm hoping a longer version appears down the line. Here, he asks me a question I get frequently at readings:

MY: What about the future.  Are you shopping these books to film producers?

PD: I do have a film agent who is fairly active.  We’ve had producers approach me about “The Poacher’s Son,” but nobody who I have had a lot of confidence in.  And that’s one thing about my experience with the movie business: I want a movie that’s not going to embarrass me.

MY: Have you talked to Stephen King about that?

PD: (Laughs) Well, I am sure he’d like to go back in time and rethink some things.  One of the challenges, I think, is that the business just isn’t interested in making low-key suspense films.  They’re doing comic-book heroes, toy franchises, and those sorts of things.  I’m hoping, however, that as the books pile up, someone will look at them and say, “You know what this reminds me of?  ‘Justified,’ or one of those cable series that are so well done.  There’s a lot of smart drama that’s occurring on television, and I can see this on AMC or FX.  I’d love to see that.

I can always hope that someone in Hollywood stumbles on the series one of these days. Obviously, I am biased, but I can see it working well.

I'll be appearing in Houston with my friend and fellow chronicler of game wardens, C.J. Box, on August 6 at Murder by the Book.

Library Journal Calls Massacre Pond "Riveting"

Library Journal is out with its round up of new crime novels and it's review of Massacre Pond is short but sweet:

Readers following outdoor procedurals will snap up Maine game warden Mike Bowditch’s fourth riveting case (after Bad Little Falls), which involves an animal activist whose ideals threaten her family’s safety and open the door to unexpected violence.

The book is in stores and available for download tomorrow.

Welcome to the Jungle

I have the big microphone today at Jungle Red Writers and am using it to talk about Massacre Pond and the real-life controversy around the proposed Maine Woods National Park. If I may quote from myself:

Who hates national parks? No one, right? According to the National Park Service, 278,939,216 people visited the United States’s crown jewels in 2011. My own state of Maine is home to one of the most popular in the East—Acadia National Park—which generally receives more than 2 million recreational visits a year. So it might surprise you to learn that one of the most controversial issues in Maine right now is whether to create a new national park in the state’s celebrated North Woods as a potential sanctuary for caribou, wolves, and lynx.

That’s why I decided to focus my new novel, Massacre Pond— the fourth in my Mike Bowditch series — around the creation of a fictional Moosehorn National Park. My protagonist is no Anna Pigeon; he’s a young Maine game warden who starts the book unsold on either the virtues of the park concept (he likes to hunt and fish, after all) or the virtues of the wealthy woman promoting the radical idea. But when a seemingly senseless moose massacre occurs on her property he finds himself dragged into the debate—which escalates very quickly to human murder, as well.

These days we’ve become used to books and television shows being “ripped from the headlines,” but from the days of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, fiction has also been a useful tool to start a public debate. And that’s what I aim to do. “Sensational” and “serious” aren’t always antonyms.

You should go over there to read the rest. Bookmark while you're there. The "Reds" are some of the most informative and entertaining authors on the web, and it's always a privilege and a kick for me to post for them.  

"Mystery Scene" Gets It

It's always good to get a favorable review. It's even better when the reviewer understands what you set out to achieve with your book. Here's the perceptive Hank Wagner writing in the new "Mystery Scene":

Bowditch is an extremely relatable protagonist, whose reactions to the trials and tribulations his creator throws at him are entirely believable. Doiron has also created a fascinating personal life for his hero—readers can see him changing as the series progresses, affected both by his human relationships and his experiences on the job. Doiron...also takes great pains to bring Bowditch's home state of Maine to vivid life.

One of the lucky readers on GoodReads who scored an advance copy of Massacre Pond called it "the one in which Mike grows up." I wouldn't go quite that far. But readers of my previous novels will begin to see where this series has been heading from the start.