Maine Warden Service Part 1

I write about a fictional version of the Maine Warden Service. Mike Bowditch is not a real warden (if he were he would have been fired by now), but I do my best to give some sense of what the actual profession is like and the actual challenges Maine game wardens face. I hope I do so in a way that respects the sacrifices, bravery, and professionalism of the real men and women of the service.

Last year was the 130th anniversary of the Maine Warden Service. As part of the ceremony, Corporal John MacDonald and his team created a series of videos that do a far better job than my books at capturing their important but misunderstood profession. Here's the first installment in the series with two others to follow here over the next few days.

A Study in Censorship

Alyssa Rosenberg has an interesting item today about a move by the Albemarle County School Board to take a Study in Scarlet off the sixth-grade reading list. The boardmembers deemed the first Sherlock Holmes novel insufficiently respectful to Mormons. 

While lost of accusations of racism, sexism, or anti-religious bias that lead to book-banning are specious or un-subtle, this is a sensationalistic novel. There’s no question that Arthur Conan Doyle’s depiction of Mormonism in A Study in Scarlet, written in 1886, 42 years after Joseph Smith’s death but four years before the 1890 manifesto that disavowed plural marriage in the church, is sensationalist. The plot revolves heavily around a forced plural marriage and Mormon military units like the Danite bands. 

Rosenberg points out that the book isn't entirely unsympathetic to Mormons, and the sensationalism flows in many directions. No one, she says, would ever mistake it for a definitive history of the Church of Latter Day Saints.

And more importantly, even if the details are sensationalistic, it is true that plural marriage and defense of the faith by force are part of early Mormon history. There’s a difference between a right to have the fact that you believe treated with respect, and the right to have the history your faith presented only the terms that make you comfortable, no matter the actual facts. Children also have a right to learn critical thinking in school, and works that offend no one are unlikely to help them develop those skills.

She would like to see the Baker Street Irregulars purchase a bunch of Sherlock Holmes books for Albemarle County schoolkids in response. That's a cause I would gladly support.

Luther in Hell

At the Edgar Awards back in April I sat up in my chair when the award for best teleplay went to a British TV show which I had never seen and about which I knew next to nothing. Since the spring, I have discovered the dark pleasures of watching Luther myself and am looking forward to the American premiere of season 2 on September 28.

If you haven't seen the show before, you can currently stream the first season on Netflix. It's violent and disturbing, but Idris Elba and Ruth Wilson turn in great performances.

"Suspenseful and Atmospheric"

I just realized that I'm tardy in posting this nice review from the Provo Daily Herald:

Mike Bowditch is a Maine game warden who winds up investigating both human and animal problems in Paul Doiron’s new mystery, “Trespasser.” Readers first met Mike in Doiron’s admirable “The Poacher’s Son,” and the new novel is even more suspenseful and atmospheric. When Bowditch is called to the scene of a car/deer collision on a coastal highway, he finds only the car. What was left of the deer has been poached and the young lady driving the car told the tow truck operator someone was coming to pick her up.

Mike feels uneasy turning the whole business over to the highway patrol without finding Ashley Kim, but does what he is told, only to find Kim’s badly used body a few days later. Mike’s unauthorized investigation reveals a host of suspects, including several truly revolting n’er-do-wells, but a strikingly similar case from the past flushes out the real murderer in a truly frightening denouement. Doiron himself is a registered Maine guide with an MFA in creative writing — a killer combination, if you’ll pardon the expression.

I like the phrase "revolting n'er-do-wells." That about sums up the fictional Barters and the Driskos.

The Future of the North Woods

Over at the day job I have a column up editorializing against the drive to dismantle Maine's Land Use Regulation Commission (LURC). It might seem like an arcane subject, but Colin Woodard's "Talk of Maine" column makes the stakes clear for anyone who values the North Woods and would prefer we not see pictures like these in northern Maine any time soon.