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Bad Little Falls (2012)

by Paul Doiron(Favorite Author)

3.75 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0312558481 (ISBN13: 9780312558482)

languge

English

genre

Mystery & Thriller

publisher

Minotaur Books

series

Mike Bowditch

review 1: For some reason - and I don't know why - I find Paul Doiron's mysteries set in the remote northwoods of Maine to be quite compelling. After all, I don't do any of the manly outdoorsman activities portrayed in his novels. I don't hunt, fish, snowmobile, camp out in the woods...and I certainly don't trap! That said, these are interesting books with protagonist that I'm really drawn to. Maine Game Warden Mike Bowditch is a loose cannon and a perpetual screw-up, but he eventually gets the job done despite the misgivings of his superiors. In this book, Mike finds himself on a new assignment in a rugged area near the Canadian border called "Down East", "a place known for its epidemic drug abuse, multi-generational unemployment, and long tradition of violent poaching." The... more author really brings to life the day to day struggles of a game warden in an isolated and often hostile environment while weaving together a very good crime fiction story. In the Author's Note at the end of the book, Paul Doiron writes, "No law-enforcement organization in Maine has suffered more deaths in the line of duty than the Warden Service". I'll be starting the fourth book in the series later this evening and once again I'll be pulling for Mike Bowditch to solve the case.
review 2: SPOILER ALERT . . . I was all set to give this book 5 stars until I got to the last 20 pages. Doiron writes so well, makes me care about his main character Mike Bowditch, knows Maine intimately and it comes through in his story, sets a great pace (I couldn't put the book down), but the whodunit was an everyone-dunit, which felt like a cop out. Plus one of the cop red herrings was left unresolved as was the death of one of the characters. Since I'm not usually a mystery reader (I make an exception for Doiron), I thought maybe I'd missed things, but my husband had read it and had the exact same frustrations with this book. So I loved, loved loved it--until I felt let down at the end. My wish is that Doiron will move on to writing fiction that's NOT mysteries--he truly writes that well and I'd love to see what he could do without the confines of a mystery structure. less

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