Review by New York Times Review
JOHN verdon writes grown-up detective novels, by which I mean stories with intelligent plots, well-developed characters and crimes that have social consequences. WHITE RIVER BURNING (Counterpoint, $27), featuring the author's brainy gumshoe-for-hire, Dave Gurney, checks all these boxes. The primary crime is the "coldblooded assassination" of a police officer, who's picked off by a professional sharpshooter. The authorities in the town of White River are supposedly knocking themselves out to solve the case, but the widow has her doubts and asks Gurney to conduct his own inquiries. So when there's a second sniper killing of a cop, he suspects a link to the victims' secret investigation of corruption in their department. Upstate New York locales like White River can be home to a remarkable assortment of social and political factions. Although the main industry is a prison, this seemingly bucolic place attracts enough moneyed weekenders to support a poets' colony and some serious real-estate investors. Verdón indulges his satirical impulses with takedowns of painters who create "burgundy cosmologies" with beet juice and charities like LORA, an animal rescue group that prides itself on spiritually bonding with its fourfooted clients. "We give animals friendship," one devotee explains. "We have conversations." On a deeper level, it seems to Gurney that White River, like many other towns, is "suffering from industrial collapse, agricultural relocation, a shrinking middle-class population, political mismanagement, the spreading heroin epidemic, troubled schools, eroding infrastructure." Verdón doesn't address all these issues, concentrating instead on the racial antagonisms that are fueled by them. Half the populace blames demonstrations by the Black Defense Alliance for stirring up hatred for local law enforcement after a traffic-stop fatality. The other half blames the blamers, creating one of those hate-fests that feed on their own furies. While keeping inside the lines of a classic whodunit plot, Verdón enriches the formula with a probing analysis of the way a community rips itself apart. THE CHILDREN steal the show in Belinda Bauer's unnerving suspense novel, SNAP (Atlantic Monthly, $26). When his mother disappears and his father ambles off in a fog, Jack Bright shoulders the parental duties for his younger sisters, Joy and baby Merry. Washing the windows, painting the front door and mowing the lawn keep snoopers away. ("The lawn mower was the best thing Jack had ever stolen.") But his newfound skills as a burglar - who also raids the kitchen of one house to make a vegetable omelet before settling down for a nap - earn him a cool rep as the "Goldilocks" thief who's unsettling the neighbors and irritating the police. In a secondary plotline that elbows itself into the principal story, a pregnant woman named Catherine While is being taunted by a stalker who leaves a nasty greeting ("I could have killed you") scrawled on a birthday card by her bedside - next to a knife. Bauer's sleuth, Detective Chief Inspector John Marvel, notable for the "piggy cunning" in his eyes, has a hand in tying up both narrative threads. But we're more in awe of young Jack: thief, con man and hero. if your chosen line of work is being a hermit, you couldn't pick a better location than Maquoit, a fogbound island 20 miles off the coast of Maine. In STAY HIDDEN (Minotaur, $26.99), Mike Bowditch, the game warden investigator in Paul Doiron's nature-loving mysteries, flies out to Maquoit to investigate the accidental (or accidental-on-purpose) shooting of a sort-of famous journalist named Ariel Evans. Ariel was supposedly on the island to do research on Blake Markman, a producer who fled Hollywood to live as a hermit and raise Icelandic sheep. But when the ferry arrives from the mainland, who should step onto the dock but Ariel herself - fit as a fiddle and anxious to investigate her own death. Doiron captures the stark beauty of his setting without averting his eyes from the sick and starving wildlife, the rancorous feuds among the lobstermen or the homicidal impulses that push islanders off the deep end. JOHN STRALEY has been holding out on US. BABY'S FIRST FELONY (Soho Crime, $25.95), his first Cecil Younger novel in 17 years, is bursting with the sort of oddball characters who make Alaska's wildlife look tame. Younger, a hapless criminal defense investigator, has had some success in educating his dodgy clients about smart ways to beat a rap. ("Don't hurt the dog and don't do the meth.") He has also witnessed some creative drug-smuggling methods. (Stuff the dope inside a fish.) But when his 13-year-old daughter and her best friend are kidnapped, he finds himself gambling for their lives - and way out of his depth. Straley knows how to wrap deadly violence in a bubble of black humor that suits the novel's beautiful but harsh setting, where whales open their maws to dine on oceans of salmon fry and men kill one another while ravens fly overhead, screaming with laughter. Marilyn STASIO has covered crime fiction for the Book Review since 1988. Her column appears twice a month.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [July 8, 2018]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Doiron brings all his considerable talent and his extensive knowledge as an outdoor guide in Maine to bear in this ninth Mike Bowditch novel (after Knife Creek, 2017). A woman has been reported shot to death on remote Maquoit Island by a deer hunter. It appears clear cut on the surface, but when Mike, newly promoted from game warden to warden investigator, arrives on the island, he's no longer sure about the case. The hunter claims he didn't fire the fatal round, and the secretive community closes ranks; furthermore, the victim was controversial author Ariel Evans, who was allegedly writing a book about resident neo-Nazis. When it turns out that Ariel is still alive, and it is her sister who is dead, public opinion turns against both Ariel and Mike. The plot is complex, and the action intense, made all the more so by forbidding terrain. The characters are well developed and clearly defined despite the dense fog that surrounds them, literally and figuratively. The extraordinary sense of place makes this Doiron's strongest novel yet. This is not Jessica Fletcher's Maine. It is a much darker place, more like C. J. Box's Wyoming. With foghorns.--Murphy, Jane Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The shooting of investigative journalist Ariel Evans on Maine's Maquoit Island drives Doiron's outstanding ninth novel featuring game warden Mike Bowditch (after 2017's Knife Creek). Ariel apparently took a house on the island as part of her preparation for her next book-a reexamination of the 20-year-old case of Blake Markman, a Hollywood producer who was suspected of intentionally setting fire to his home with his wife inside, but who evaded criminal charges and now lives alone on a small island near Maquoit. Though the initial police report is that the victim, who was hanging up some laundry to dry, was mistaken for a deer by hunter Kenneth Crowley, who confessed to pulling the trigger in error, Mike later learns that Crowley only found the body and never confessed to anything. That the dead woman was having an affair with one of the locals provides a possible murder motive, but the case takes a bizarre turn when a woman turns up claiming to be Ariel. Doiron balances nuanced characterizations and intelligent plotting perfectly. Author tour. Agent: Ann Rittenberg, Ann Rittenberg Literary Agency. (July) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
In the ninth book of Doiron's series (after Knife Creek), Mike Bowditch has just been promoted to investigator in the Maine Warden Service. As the new guy, he's left behind when there is a hunting homicide in Berwick. This makes him the only warden available to work on the second incident that day, out on remote, fog-bound Maquoit Island, where a woman has been shot to death by a deer hunter. Mike is flown out to the island by his friend Charley, along with a seasoned investigator from the state police and another warden. The victim is the famous journalist Ariel Evans, who came to the island to profile Silicon Valley executive-turned-hermit Blake Markman. Suspecting this shooting was no accident and eager to prove himself, Mike pursues the recalcitrant locals through the cold fog and a huge plot twist. VERDICT After a slow start, Doiron's mystery picks up steam and provides a thrilling read. For fans of the series and other outdoor lawmen mysteries. [See Prepub Alert, 1/8/18.]-Nancy H. Fontaine, Norwich P.L., VT © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
