The New York Times Raves About Massacre Pond

The August 4 New York Times Book Review is online, and it features a rave review by crime fiction columnist Marilyn Stasio about Massacre Pond:

Nobody knows the woods of Maine like the rugged individuals who eke out a living by hunting, fishing and cutting timber. And nobody knows the region’s inhabitants like Mike Bowditch, the young game warden in Paul Doiron’s manly mysteries set in this “desolate outland where game wardens were hated and oxycodone abuse was epidemic.”MASSACRE POND (Minotaur, $24.99) presents Bowditch with “the worst wildlife crime in Maine history” when 10 moose are slaughtered on the property of a philanthropist who intends to turn her 100,000 acres of prime land into a national park. The locals making a living from this ancient forest are no picturesque yokels: along with the serious woodsmen there are poachers, gun-traffickers and even the occasional pedophile — none of them inclined to yield their ground gracefully. Doiron makes shrewd use of the moose murders to address a larger issue: the standoff between avid environmentalists and the residents of an economically depressed region faced with losing their livelihood.

When you set out to become a novelist, this is one of the moments you dream about.

Where Is Massacre Pond?

I've always loved maps, especially maps of fictional locations. I can't fully express my enthusiasm for this map of Hardy's Wessex or this one of Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County. In the Mike Bowditch series I combine real Maine places (taking considerable liberties with some of them) with creations of my own. This map is a little project of mine to give readers some sense of the approximate locales where my stories take place. Don't take any of the marked locations too literally. It's just fiction, after all.

Massacre Pond Chosen for the Indie Next List!

Indiebound, which is an organization of independent booksellers, has chosen Massacre Pond as one of the new titles for indies to showcase in the month of August. My novel was recommended by Rita Moran of Apple Valley Books in Winthrop who writes:

Paul Doiron just keeps getting better. Open Massacre Pond, and you can smell the sweetness of the Maine woods, you can feel dry leaves underfoot, and hear the birds singing at dawn. But Massacre Pond offers far more than that: real Maine characters who might have just walked out of a local diner, issues that are as fresh as the latest headlines, and the kind of suspense that will keep your lights on far into the night.

I don't know an author who doesn't prize being on the Indie Next List as one of the highest honors a new book can receive.

The Lewiston Sun-Journal Says I'm "Catching Fire"

It's a phrase I can no longer read without thinking of Katniss Everdeen, but I'll take this great review from V. Paul Reynolds and the Lewiston Sun-Journal:

Doiron's tale has all of the ingredients of a tense thriller that kept my attention to the end. Doiron has something else going with his Mike Bowditch series besides good storytelling. He is a master, not only at his ability to portray the real Maine, but in developing characters that are evocative and fascinating in their human foibles and complex personal relationships.

How he manages so skillfully to take real Maine characters and events and weave them so seamlessly into the tapestry of his story is worthy of admiration. For example, the senseless, wanton mass killing of the moose is not a figment of Doiron's imagination; it happened, and to this day has never been solved. Word is that the Maine Warden Service suspects who committed this felony but has insufficient hard evidence to justify the issuance of summons.

Doiron's protagonist, Warden Mike Bowditch, is an endearing, courageous character with his share of personal problems and self-doubts. Personally, I can't wait to see what adventure awaits Warden Bowditch after Massacre Pond.

So far, with this book, the odds seem ever in my favor.

Maine Sunday Telegram calls Massacre Pond: "Compelling."

The Maine Sunday Telegram is out with its review of Massacre Pond. My books are published internationally, but I always care what the hometown papers think. Reviewer Frank O. Smith likes what he read:

There are nefarious, crazy and perverted characters to suspect as well as zealous, sad and unsuspecting suspects.

Some clues are blatant, others hidden in plain sight. That it ends badly for so many is part of the well-crafted tale.

And as for the larger questions of how Mike Bowditch will reconcile his angst over love, his past and his future – that's the thorniest, most engaging mystery of them all. 

Smith has reviewed several of my previous novels and he's right on about the last part: the real mystery at the heart of each book is how humankind's capacity for violence will change Mike Bowditch.