"Superbly Crafted Intrigue" Says the Maine Sunday Telegram

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.

Bangor Daily News Interview

Today the Bangor Daily News is introducing a new Outdoors publication, and I am honored that it includes an interview with me by John Holyoke. Here's a taste:

“After I graduated, I went to Hollywood. My goal was to become a screenwriter,” Doiron said. “I spent a really miserable year in Hollywood and came back with my tail between my legs, and sort of fell back in love with the state of Maine at that point.”

Still, Doiron, who grew up in Scarborough and graduated from Cheverus High in Portland, wasn’t sure he was going to stay in his home state.

“I think I thought I was going to leave, but a couple of things happened. One was, I was struck by lightning while I was camping with some friends Memorial Day weekend, 1988,” Doiron said.

That episode was terrifying, Doiron said. He and two friends were camping (illegally, he admits) in western Maine’s Grafton Notch State Park. A tree was struck. Doiron was burned. And one of his pals was seriously injured.

“But when I survived it, and my friend survived it, thank God, people told me, ‘Well, you want to be a writer. Finally you have something to write about.’” Doiron said.

As I told John Holyoke, I don't know if Mike Bowditch is going to share my experience of being struck by lightning, but I feel an electrical storm looming.

Kennebec Journal Says Third Time Is the Charm

William Bushnell is out with his review of Bad Little Falls in the Kennebec Journal, and he calls it the best yet in the series:

Bad Little Falls is Camden author Paul Doiron’s third book in his wildly popular, award-winning mystery series featuring Game Warden Mike Bowditch. Following The Poacher's Son and Trespasser, this mystery is even better than the first two, which says a lot about Doiron’s exceptional ability to hold readers’ interest with compelling plots and enduring characters. Best, however, is Doiron’s keen talent for creating a palpable atmosphere, capturing the Maine winter in all its bitter-cold and snow-covered landscape, as well as the poverty, violence and despair of a Maine county too easily ignored.

Bill might just be the preeminent book reviewer in the state these days, having reviewed hundreds of titles for Maine papers over the past couple of decades. We know each other a little from a previous job I held, but he has never worked for me at the magazine, and he certainly doesn't owe me a favorable review. His honest opinion means a great deal to me.

Talking "Bad Little Falls" on "207"

I can't embed the television interview I did with Kathleen Shannon for the WCSH 6 TV show "207," but here's a link to our conversation. Doing TV is such an odd experience. Everything moves so much more quickly than you imagine. Five minutes pass in the blink of an eye. "It's like a waking dream," is the way one friend—a fellow print person—described it to me. That seems about right.

Bedtime Stories

I was invited this week to write a guest column for Suzanne Beecher's excellent DearReader.com. I suppose I could have written about deer hunting or showshoeing or the many macho pursuits I deal with in my novels. But instead I shared a little of my domestic side, specifically my nightly ritual of reading aloud to my wife, Kristen, each night before bed. Like many longtime habits I don't exactly remember how this one began, but I can scarcely imagine my life now without it.