The Bone Orchard

Starred review from May 19, 2014
Having quit the Maine Warden Service for various personal reasons, Mike Bowditch barely ekes out a living as a fishing guide, showing off Maine’s North Woods to tourists, in Edgar finalist Doiron’s excellent fifth series installment (after 2013’s Massacre Pond). Though he still spends most of his time outdoors, Mike is acutely aware that he no longer has the authority to arrest lawbreakers, nor does he have the respect of his former colleagues. Mike realizes just how much of an outsider he is when his mentor and former boss, Sgt. Kathy Frost, kills Jimmy Gammon, a distraught Afghan war veteran and former military policeman, in self-defense. Later, a gunman seriously wounds Kathy outside her farmhouse. Despite his lack of authority, Mike joins the investigation into Kathy’s shooting, sorting through the list of suspects, who include members of Gammon’s politically connected family, his former platoon mates, and Kathy’s vengeful neighbor. Or was Kathy’s alcoholic brother with a gambling problem the real target? Thoughtful plotting and strong characters raise this above the crime novel pack. Agent: Ann Rittenberg, Ann Rittenberg Literary Agency.

In Mike Bowditch's fifth outing, Henry Leyva's narration offers a more thoughtful hero than listeners have heard before. Mike has quit the Warden Service and is working as a fishing guide in Maine's North Woods, but that doesn't mean he's quit investigating. When Sgt. Kathy Frost, Bowditch's mentor, shoots and kills a veteran of the Afghan conflict, the consensus is that the disfigured vet committed "suicide by cop." Even so, anger runs high, and Kathy is ambushed and critically injured by a sniper's bullet. While Leyva's Downeast accents are a little heavy-handed with certain over-the-top characters, he's generally credible, particularly with place names. Leyva deftly handles Bowditch's unpredictable moods, slipping easily from intense grief to being controlled and capable of logical deductions. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine