Kirkus Raves Over "Bad Little Falls"

Kirkus Reviews advertises itself as the world's toughest book reviewers, and if you ask most authors, you won't hear an argument on that score. (I was lucky to earn one of their rarely awarded stars for The Poacher's Son, and it felt like a real coup.) In their August 1 issue—not yet online, but I will post a link as soon as one is available—they take on Bad Little Falls.

So what's the verdict from Kirkus? Pretty great:

Now that he’s antagonized every other lawman in the state of Maine (Trespasser, 2011, etc.), game warden Mike Bowditch gets exiled to Washington County, the Down East territory where nothing ever happens. Things happen.

A snowy dinner with Doc Larrabee, the elderly veterinarian who’s one of the few people on speaking terms with Mike, and Doc’s friend, survivalist/professor Kevin Kendrick, ends when Doc, somewhat the worse for liquor, asks Mike to respond with him to his neighbor Ben Sprague’s call for help. Seems that someone has staggered out of the blizzard into the Spragues’ home and told Ben and his wife, Doris, a wild story about a friend he left wandering out in the snow. The someone, Mike realizes on their arrival, is Prester Sewall, brother of local beauty Jamie Sewall, who’s constitutionally drawn to all the wrong men, from her bullying little ex Mitch Munro, father of her son Lucas, to Randall Cates, the drug dealer she’s been seeing most recently. The friend, Mike soon discovers when he and Kevin go looking for him, is Randall Cates. His death, which seems at first like a happy ending for Jamie, looks both backward to the overdose last year of college student Trinity Raye and forward to the consequences of Mike’s fatal attraction to Jamie. The story’s ultimate import becomes clear only after more bad weather, some truly ugly surprises and the obligatory standoffs between Mike and everyone capable of fighting with him.

A high-stakes, high-tension yarn in which you keep wishing everything would turn out fine for the deeply flawed, deeply sympathetic hero even though you know it won't.

I've been remarking today that the anonymous reviewer's last sentence probably sums up my Mike Bowditch books better than anything I've read. Those Kirkus reviewers may be tough, but they're sharp too.

"Bad Little Falls" Is the Best Yet

That's the opinion of Linda Rodriguez, who writes widely about literary mysteries and is the author of the wonderful novel Every Last Secret. On her blog today she takes an early look at Bad Little Falls:

Doiron uses his gift for language that evokes the environment surrounding his characters to make this northernmost part of Maine another character within the book. As usual, his plot is complicated and full of suspense and surprising twists, and his characters are multifaceted and well-drawn, making sometimes questionable choices due to unfortunate relationships. One of the real pleasures of Bad Little Falls is watching the development of Mike Bowditch. In the first books in the series, Mike was likable, but self-destructively impulsive with severe anger issues. In this book, he has the same problems, but he’s seriously trying to control them, not always successfully. Doiron offers a very realistic portrait of an engaging and troubled young man who is slowly and painfully maturing.

Linda says my third book is my best yet. That's very kind of her. Like Mike Bowditch, I hope I'm making progress.

A Dull Knife Can Kill You

At Maine Crime Writers today I discuss the awkward tendency of some journalists to confuse being a Maine game warden (which I am not, although I write about one) with being a Registered Maine Guide (which I am). I also share a few survival tips which I've picked up outdoors, usually from Master Maine Guides like my friend Greg Drummond of Claybrook Mountain Lodge. Here's one:

A Sharp Knife Is a Safe Knife: At first glance, a scalpel-sharp knife seems more dangerous to use than a blunt blade, but that's usually not the case. A sharp knife will catch easily on the item it's meant to cut while a dull knife will slide off the surface, causing you to lose control as it slips (and then it's a question of how good your reflexes are). This principle is even more important when it comes to axes and hatchets. A dull axe can bounce off a log when swung. That's how many inexperienced woodsmen end up chopping into their feet.

Makes sense when you think about it. Chefs know this too, by the way.

"Bad Little Falls" Shines

In his "Out There" blog for the Bangor Daily News, columnist John Holyoke has some very nice things to say about my forthcoming novel:

Set deep in the Maine woods, in the dead of winter, Bowditch (as he often does) happens upon a crime that isn’t what it seems. As he digs deeper, he runs into all kinds of interesting Maine characters. Some are friends. Some are foes. And he’s never quite sure which is which. All of which, of course, serve to ratchet the tension level page by page, chapter by chapter.

Doiron doesn’t really need my praise here. He gets enough of that when his books are nominated for Anthony and Edgar awards (which they have been).

His previous novels, “The Poacher’s Son” and “Trespasser,” have been best-sellers.

I’m certain that “Bad Little Falls” will follow suit.

I can only hope that he's prophetic on that last point. 

I've written before about how meaningful it is to me to have Maine readers respond so favorably to my books. Like most novelists I think of myself as writing about universal themes for what I hope will be a world-wide audience. But there's undeniably something sweet about getting a positive response from readers who know the region you're writing about. Maybe it's the journalist in me, but it's important to hear that I've gotten things right.

Let Me Tell You About Mike Bowditch

At Maine Crime Writers today, my fellow authors and myself decided to use our group post to introduce our various protagonists to readers unfamiliar with our books. Here's some of what I wrote about Warden Mike Bowditch:

Mike Bowditch is no hero when we meet him [in The Poacher's Son]: He is impetuous, self-destructive, incapable of intimacy, and tormented by memories of his bullying and emotionally distant father. But he is physically courageous, highly intelligent, observant of the world around him (especially the natural world), and he has a good heart. Most importantly, Mike understands how screwed-up he is, and the thing he wants most out of life is to be a better man. I get letters from readers who are frustrated by the many mistakes Mike makes (one Amazon reviewer memorably expounded on the multitudinous ways in which he considered my rookie warden to be a loser). But I also get emails from readers who tell me how real Mike feels as a character because of his flaws.

Amazon reviews are actually fascinating windows into the various ways that people read your books. Of course, it's always satisfying when people tell you how much they love your novels. But the bad reviews, frankly, are more intriguing in their idiosyncracies. It's kind of the Anna Karenina principle at work: "Good reviews are all alike; each negative review is negative in its own way."

But that's a subject for another post....