When you annoy the bosses once too many times and
you work as a game warden for the State of Maine, you get sent to their version
of Siberia. In this case, Warden Mike Bowditch has been sent to Washington
County. The eastern most county in Maine is well known for poaching, drug
abuse, high unemployment, and a host of other social ills. Not to mention the
brutal winter working conditions. Bowditch is being punished and he knows it. Just
about everything Bowditch has to deal with in his new assignment is made worse because
his considerable reputation precedes him.
The biggest place in the county population wise is the
county seat of Machias. The town barely has two thousand people. The small town,
as well as the surrounding county, is a place where everyone knows everyone
else, looks the other way, and pretends to know nothing. That includes ignoring
the actions of a local drug dealer. A drug dealer that soon winds up dead with
his friend severely injured by frost bite.
While others believe the friend killed the drug
dealer during a snowstorm, Bowditch doesn’t think so. Any shred of credibility
he had coming in was shot by his involvement in the case (never get romantically
involved with a suspect is rule one no matter what agency you work for), so he is forced to go it alone to get to the
truth. It isn’t the first time and won’t
be the last.
The series that began with The Poacher’s Son and continued with Trespasser just keeps getting better and better. This is a very complicated novel that continues to build on an excellent foundation while bringing further nuance and depth to the Bowditch character. Those efforts do not get in the way of the multiple storylines at work in this complex and multi-layered novel. Bad Little Falls by Maine author Paul Doiron and well worth your time.
Bad
Little Falls: A Novel
Paul
Doiron
Minotaur
Books (St. Martin’s Press)
August
2012
ISBN#
978-0-312-55848-2
Hardback
(also available in e-book)
310
Pages
$24.99
Material supplied by the good folks of the Plano,
Texas Public Library System.
Kevin R. Tipple ©2012
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