Book Review: The Poacher's Son

The Poacher’s Son by Paul Doiron (Minotaur, 2010)

Reviewed by Cheryl Shore

        

         I haven’t been a big fan of series in the last decade. I usually gravitate toward stand-alones that offer something unique in the crime fiction or suspense genres. But reading The Poacher’s Son has changed that trend, at least for the moment. After reading this debut novel, I’m well on my way through the rest of the series featuring game warden Mike Bowditch.  

         The Poacher’s Son is a novel of familial suspense, my label for a genre that doesn’t exactly exist.  Protagonist Mike Bowditch learns about two murders, and one of the victims is a police officer. The number-one suspect is his father, Jack. We learn about Mike’s childhood with his father, and it’s a rough one. We learn about Mike’s attempt to connect with his father during his adolescence, and how that experiment ended in failure. Warden Mike Bowditch admits that his father is an unsavory character who doesn’t hesitate to break the law. But he also knows that Jack Bowditch is too smart to kill a cop. 

         The emotional tug to vindicate his father is strong and leads him into trouble with his superiors, and his girlfriend, Sarah. Still, Mike is driven to unravel the mystery of the cop-killing, finding a web of circumstances that hits closer to home and is far more complex than he could have imagined. When he realizes the magnitude of his personal danger, he’s all alone in the Maine wilderness. His survival depends on quick thinking, and his ability to reframe the situation by letting go of his preconceptions and emotional biases. I found The Poacher’s Son to be a page turner. If you start it, I don’t think you’ll want to put it down.