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Summary
Summary
Massacre Pond is Edgar finalist Paul Doiron's superb new novel featuring Game Warden Mike Bowditch and a beautiful, enigmatic woman whose mission to save the Maine wilderness may have incited a murder
On an unseasonably hot October morning, Bowditch is called to the scene of a bizarre crime: the corpses of seven moose have been found senselessly butchered on the estate of Elizabeth Morse, a wealthy animal rights activist who is buying up huge parcels of timberland to create a new national park.
What at first seems like mindless slaughter--retribution by locals for the job losses Morse's plan is already causing in the region--becomes far more sinister when a shocking murder is discovered and Mike's investigation becomes a hunt to find a ruthless killer. In order to solve the controversial case, Bowditch risks losing everything he holds dear: his best friends, his career as a law enforcement officer, and the love of his life.
The beauty and magnificence of the Maine woods is the setting for a story of suspense and violence when one powerful woman's missionary zeal comes face to face with ruthless cruelty.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The people of Washington County, Maine, are in an uproar in Doiron's fourth novel starring game warden Mike Bowditch (after 2012's Bad Little Falls), the best yet in the series. Hippie-turned-millionaire Betty Morse has spent some of her fortune to buy 100,000 acres of woodland that she intends to give to the federal government for a national park. Morse now has a long list of enemies, including hunters and forest-product workers whose lives and finances would be adversely affected. The first manifestation of the hostile reaction to Morse's purchase may be the shooting of five moose on her property. The state of the carcasses suggests that whoever gunned down the animals didn't do so for their meat. Bowditch is first on the scene of the moose slaughter, but his unpopularity with his superiors soon relegates him to spectator status, even as the violence escalates. An unusual lead investigator, thoughtful plotting, and lyrical prose add up to a winner. Agent: Ann Rittenberg, Ann Rittenberg Literary Agency. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Mike Bowditch is somehow still employed as a Maine game warden after his last escapade featuring an ill-advised affair with a suspect's sister and an investigative coup that humiliated his superiors (Bad Little Falls, 2012). Now matured a bit and trying to play by warden service rules, Bowditch is coasting through an uneventful hunting season until his friend Billy Cronk reports something's wicked bad at controversial Moosehorn Lodge. Elizabeth Morse is campaigning to preserve Maine's wilderness and has forbidden logging and hunting on the thousands of acres she's recently acquired. Morse, who has been threatened repeatedly, is reviled by those who believe her mission threatens Maine's outdoorsman culture and the locals' ability to feed their families. When Bowditch arrives, he finds five moose calculatingly slaughtered. Before the wardens narrow the immense list of suspects, a human murder is added to the animal casualties. Bowditch's past insubordination has secured his banishment to the investigation's fringes, but when Billy becomes the main suspect, he can't let things lie. This series follows Bowditch from the start of his warden career, and his evolution creates a constantly fresh perspective, nicely paired with solid procedural details and an outdoors education. Massacre Pond, arguably the best yet, boasts fair-minded exploration of Maine's conflicting environmental and economic interests and marks a turning point for Bowditch, who questions his fit with a career that constantly requires suppressing his instincts.--Tran, Christine Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
'Tis the night before Christmas and all through the house not a creature is stirring in John Dufresne's ghoulishly funny crime novel, NO REGRETS, COYOTE (Norton, $25.95). That's because everyone in the Halliday house - father, mother and three little kiddies in pajamas - is dead, shot in what appears to be a case of parental murder-suicide. But Wylie (Coyote) Melville, a therapist who serves as a "volunteer forensic consultant" for the Everglades County Police Department, doesn't buy that explanation. Although he's only acting on intuition, Wylie has proved to be a gifted mind reader ("I just look, I stare, I gaze, and I pay attention to what I see," he modestly explains), so people tend to put stock in his hunches. Wylie is also one of those quirky individuals who attract similarly eccentric people - like the affable squatter who camps out in his backyard and is eventually given the run of the house. This magnetic attraction extends to Wylie's client list, which includes oddballs like Wayne Vanderhyde, who breaks into vacant homes (of which there are plenty in this real-estate graveyard) and leaves love notes for some future resident to find, and Dermid Reardon, whose overwhelming desire is to be an amputee. ("We don't all crave to be symmetrical," a woman friend of Wylie's observes.) The most endearing of Wylie's many acquaintances is Bay Lettique, an expert at close-up sleight-of-hand magic tricks whose specialty is costuming himself as a gullible tourist (in Bermuda shorts, socks with sandals and a silly-looking fanny pack) and cleaning up at the poker table. But he's also something of a wizard, with an uncanny ability to materialize whenever Wylie needs help - even in Alaska, just one of the unlikely places this loose-limbed narrative takes him. Following the loopy plot, with its cartoonish cast of Russian hit men, crooked lawyers and homicidal cops, is actually part of the entertainment, although a visit to Santa's workshop at the North Pole would seem only slightly less incredible than that surreal trip to Fairbanks. Yet for all his excesses, Dufresne is an original talent. His humor is frightfully dark, but it's also quite dazzling - even by the exacting standards of South Florida crime fiction. Inspector Jack Carrigan, the troubled protagonist of Stav Sherez's masterfully executed British police procedural, A DARK REDEMPTION (Europa Editions, paper, $17), is adamant on one point: "We don't talk about those days. We don't talk about Africa." But Carrigan can't forget the violent turn his life took when he and two college friends went there on a lark and were captured by rebel fighters. East Africa also holds the key to the grisly murder of Grace Okello, a Ugandan student who was writing her graduate thesis on the political use of terror and torture in African revolutionary movements. Carrigan is a complex character, someone well worth meeting again. But Sherez is too purposeful a writer to fall into the tired convention of making everything depend on his hero. His narrative covers a number of hot-button issues, from political unrest in immigrant communities to government meddling in police cases. It's no surprise that the streets of London turn out to be just as treacherous as the wilds of Africa. 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. One of the last places on earth where a crack newspaper reporter can still make a living is in the pages of detective fiction. Willie Black, who covers the crime beat for a last-gasp city daily in Richmond, Va., has made it through budget cuts, personnel blood baths and the demands of new technology. ("They want us to blog every day, like flossing.") But he nearly loses his job - and his life - in Howard Owen's latest mystery, THE PHILADELPHIA QUARRY (Permanent Press, $28), when he comes to the defense of a black man named Richard Slade, who was locked up at the age of 17, falsely convicted of raping a 16-year-old white girl. Alicia Parker Simpson has had to live with a bad conscience for the 27 years this innocent man spent in prison, but when she's shot to death just days after Slade is released on DNA evidence the whole town rushes to judgment. Everyone, that is, except Willie, who takes up the cause of proving Slade's innocence. Now in his mid-50s, Willie is too long in the tooth to play the role of brash young reporter, but he's a decent guy and a terrific investigator, and in the end he restores some dignity to "a profession that's becoming as relevant as the Pony Express." Is this a case of parental murder-suicide? A crime-solving therapist isn't so sure
Library Journal Review
Readers following outdoor procedurals will snap up Maine game warden Mike Bowditch's fourth riveting case (after Bad Little Falls), which involves an animal activist whose ideals threaten her family's safety and open the door to unexpected violence. (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.