Great Review in the Boston Globe!

Thank you, Hallie Ephron!

Paul Doiron made a big splash with his Edgar Award-nominated first novel, “The Poacher’s Son,” which introduced Maine game warden Mike Bowditch and his extraordinary talent for tracking animals and people through the worst weather that Maine can dish up. When he’s reassigned to the eponymous “Bad Little Falls,” a remote town near the Canadian border where drug abuse, unemployment, poverty, violence, and poaching are rampant, his reputation for disregarding orders precedes him and it looks as if his career has dead-ended. To him, it’s the equivalent of “being exiled to Siberia.”

The story has a strong sense of place and makes palpable the raw power that weather and water can wield. The plot is driven by the elusive possibility that this time Bowditch can redeem his career while saving Jamie and her son. Shelve this book beside the works of Steve Hamilton and William Kent Kruger, stories of strong but not macho men living in godforsaken places, bruised by past relationships, and trying to get it right this time.

"Bad Little Falls" Is a 2012 RT Award Nominee!

You never know what news the Internet will bring. This morning I learned that Bad Little Falls is a nominee in the category of "Amateur Sleuth" in RT's 2012 Reviewers' Choice Awards. It's an interesting and diverse category. I'll be curious to see in which direction the judges go, but as is always the case with awards, it's just an honor to be nominated. (Although winning isn't bad either.)

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Portlander

I have a new Editor's Note up over at DownEast.com about my high school days. Like the Hibernian author to whom I allude in the headline, I was educated by Jesuits. I attended Cheverus High School in Portland, Maine, in an era when it was still an all-boys institution. The testosterone levels were off the charts back then, and it's no wonder Cheverus dominated Maine athletics for decades. The school has changed (almost entirely for the better), as has Portland itself. A couple of years ago, I did a class visit at Cheverus and got a tour from the president of the new facilities. I was impressed but also nostalgic for the school that formed my personality (for better and worse). I feel the same about Portland. The city is so much more dynamic than the one I remember from my teens and twenties—every time I visit, I get the itch to move back there. And yet part of me always feels a little wistful walking the streets of the Old Port and thinking of bars no longer there, the friends who have moved away. I guess that's the nature of getting older: you become haunted by your past self.