Introducing BAD LITTLE FALLS (Coming August 7, 2012)

Maine game warden Mike Bowditch has been sent into exile, transferred by his superiors to a remote outpost on the Canadian border. When a blizzard descends on the coast, Bowditch is called to the rustic cabin of a terrified couple. A raving and halffrozen man has appeared at their door, claiming his friend is lost in the storm. But what starts as a rescue mission in the wilderness soon becomes a baffling murder investigation. The dead man is a notorious drug dealer, and state police detectives suspect it was his own friend who killed him. Bowditch isn’t so sure, but his vow not to interfere in the case is tested when he finds himself powerfully attracted to a beautiful woman with a dark past and a troubled young son. The boy seems to know something about what really happened in the blizzard, but he is keeping his secrets locked in a cryptic notebook, and Mike fears for the safety of the strange child. Meanwhile, an anonymous tormentor has decided to make the new warden’s life a living hell. Alone and outgunned, Bowditch turns for assistance to his old friend, the legendary bush pilot Charley Stevens. But in this snowbound landscape—where smugglers wage blood feuds by night—help seems very far away indeed. If Bowditch is going to catch a killer, he must survive on his own wits and discover strength he never knew he possessed.
Yeah, I'm excited.
And yeah, you can preorder it now. 

 

When Life Imitates Your Book

My wife and I were just headed home from dinner with her parents when I experienced the novelist's equivalent of deja vu. We were driving along a dark rural lane when up ahead in our headlights we saw an SUV on its side off the road. It had swerved, slid across the snow-covered asphalt, flipped over, and come to rest against several trees.

We were first on the scene. I took my Maglite out of the back of my car—the same arm-length flashlight Mike Bowditch uses in my books—and scrambled down into the woods. I shined the light through the windshield but saw no one. The keys were still in the ignition, and there were a handful of Pabst Blue Ribbon cans scattered around the interior. The hood of the white Nissan Pathfinder was still warm. The crash couldn't have happened more than a few minutes before we arrived.

My wife borrowed my cell phone and called the police. While we waited, I followed a series of footsteps in the slush down the road until I saw the blue lights of a responding Camden cruiser. Then I wandered back to give a statement.

I would have liked to stick around to see what the cops turned up. In all likelihood it was a drunk who'd hightailed it out of there before the police showed up to administer a sobriety test. The officers ran the plates while we were giving our statements. The owner of the vehicle lives two towns over, we heard. It's a cold night, and I'm not sure how far he'll be able to run.

The situation, of course, strongly resembles the opening to my novel Trespasser. In my book Mike Bowditch punishes himself for not searching for the missing driver at a crash scene very much like the one I discovered. I'm hopeful that I'll read the outcome of this incident in the newspaper in the next few days, but it's not a given. 

As a writer, I had the power to create a satisfying resolution to the mystery my game warden stumbled upon. In real life, we don't always know how these things turn out. I'm having a hard time reconciling myself to that idea tonight.

Thoreau: The Land That Was


"It is a country full of evergreen trees, of mossy silver birches and watery maples, the ground dotted with insipid, small red berries, and strewn with damp and moss-grown rocks a country diversified with innumerable lakes and rapid streams, peopled with trout and various species of leucisci, with salmon, shad and pickerel, and other fishes; the forest resounding at rare intervals with the note of the chicadee, the blue-jay, and the woodpecker, the scream of the fish-hawk and the eagle, the laugh of the loon, and the whistle of ducks along the solitary streams; and at night, with the hooting of owls and howling of wolves; in summer, swarming with myriads of black flies and mosquitoes, more formidable than wolves to the white man. Such is the home of the moose, the bear, the caribou, the wolf, the beaver, and the Indian."

 —Henry David Thoreau

Bad Little Falls Word Cloud

My next novel, the third in the Mike Bowditch series, will be titled Bad Little Falls, and it comes out from Minotaur Books on August 7. That seems like a long time from now, but having been through this process before, I know the date will sneak up faster than I expect. I am in awe of authors like C.J. Box who are capable of turning out two quality novels a year, but that isn't me. To tide you over, I present my annual spoiler-free word cloud. Here is the essence of Bad Little Falls, based on the words you will encounter most in your reading. Consider it a sneak peek: