Review: "Skin and Bones," Paul Doiron

By Liz Soares

Charley Stevens as a young Maine game warden, tracking down a mysterious hermit. His wife, Ora, driving to a remote homestead to help a woman in peril. Shadow, the wolf-hybrid, helping out on a case. And Warden Mike Bowditch investigating the bizarre appearnce of a rattlesnake in Maine--as described by a third-person narrator.

Skin and Bones, an absorbing collection of short stories by Paul Doiron (and the title of one of those stories), is a kind of through-the-looking glass trip. It has the comfortable familiarity of the novels in Doiron's popular mystery series featuring Bowditch, but it’s served up with a twist.

The tales add the backstories of characters readers have come to know, and fills in some spaces between the novels. The final story, Sheep’s Clothing, picks up where 2024’s Pitch Dark left off. It doesn’t significantly advance Bowditch’s life except in one important way, which I won’t reveal here.

Several of the stories feature Charley, Bowditch’s crusty, fearless mentor—in his salad days. His daughter Stacy, who eventually marries the younger warden, is a kid. Charley’s wife, Ora, has yet to be seriously injured in a plane accident. In Skin and Bones, Charley is approached by Mike’s father, Jack, who was a poacher and all around bad ‘un. In this story, however, Jack has found a dead bald eagle, is outraged, and wants Charley’s help in finding who killed it.

Bowditch is the protagonist in other stories, at various stages in his career. He’s working in the Sebago Lake region when he gets a report there’s a rattlesnake on the loose. As every Mainer knows, there are no deadly snakes in Maine…but then a young man is attacked by a rattler and may lose a leg. When Mike gets to the scene, he meets up with a memorable character from one of the novels (Knife Creek?)— Ricky Elwell, the young diamonds-in-the rough taxidermist and butcher who, it turns out, knows a lot about snakes. Though the novels are told by Bowditch, this story is told by a third-person narrator, which provides an interesting perspective on the sometimes reckless warden.

All the stories have the same strong sense of place as the novels; Doiron is adept at painting the varied landscape  of Maine. There are general stores, rough shacks at the end of dirt roads, rich people from away, snowmobiles, lakes and mountains. Doiron’s use of real locations—Grand Lake Stream, Lake St. George—always adds richness to his fiction.

I thoroughly enjoyed what felt like an inside look at some of my favorite characters in mystery fiction. And though I live right here in Maine, it really is a great place to visit. Despite all the murders.

Skin and Bones will be published in May; I read an advance copy through the NetGalley program.