Dead Man's Wake

January 1, 2023

An Edmund White Award winner for her debut, Alcestis, Beutner draws on the actual 1897 disappearance of a Mount Holyoke student in Killingly, a gothic tale that plumbs missing Bertha's secrets and those of her loner friend, Agnes. Best-selling historical fiction pro Davis goes Spectacular in 1950s New York, where newbie Rockette Marion Brooks joins with Peter Griggs--a mental health specialist promoting psychological profiling--to help the police investigate a series of bombings that have shaken the city. In Edgar Award-winning Doiron's Dead Man's Wake, Maine Game Warden Investigator Mike Bowditch witnesses a hit-and-flee speedboat plowing into two swimmers and suspects murder when he learns that the victims were a badly slashed up man and his married lover (100,000-copy first printing). A troubled soul in high school, Wilfred "Wil" Threadgill returns to town as a major music star, but in the New York Times best-selling James's Hiss Me Deadly he's getting threats that lead to a band member's death and sets librarian Charlie Harris and bewhiskered kitty Diesel into action; originally scheduled for March 2022. Proprietor of a busy food stand at Taipei's largest night market, Jing-nan gets framed for several big-news murders unfolding during the Austronesian Cultural Festival in Lin's Death Doesn't Forget. After a first outing in Schellman's Suspense Magazine best-booked The Body in the Garden, Vivian Kelly returns in The Last Drop of Hemlock, now working full-time at the freewheeling speakeasy the Nightingale and determined to investigate the poisoning of doorman Pearlie, incongruously ruled a suicide (40,000-copy first printing). Long Island homicide detective-turned-Garda officer in Dublin, Ireland, Taylor's Maggie D'arcy is brought in on a case using her detective skills to locate the Stolen Child of a murdered model (50,000-copy first printing).

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May 15, 2023
Maine Game Warden Investigator Mike Bowditch's engagement party is interrupted by a suspicious noise that leads to the discovery of two corpses. The sound that interrupts the celebration that Mike's stepfather, tax attorney Neil Turner (who was married to Mike's late mother), is hosting at his lake house for him; his fiancee, Stacey Stevens; her parents; and Neil's new wife, yoga instructor Jubilee Batchelder, is that of a Jet Ski, which no one's supposed to be running on the lake after dark. Stacey notes that it's not Mike's district or his job, but when he hears the thump of a collision, he ventures out with Neil and Stacey's father, Charley, a retired game warden, and they find first a severed arm and then the rest of Kipling Whitcomb, the husband of Mouse Island owner Dianne Fenton-Whitcomb, a wealthy invalid who had no idea (or did she?) that her mate was spending Labor Day weekend in their lake house with another woman. That other woman was hair colorist Gina Randazza, 22, whose husband, petty criminal Joey Randazza of the Direwolves motorcycle gang, becomes the instant suspect of choice for Det. Roger Finch of the Maine State Police once her body is also found in the lake. The investigations are awkwardly divided between Finch's search for Gina's murderer and Mike's look at the apparently accidental death of Kip. Further awkwardness is provided by lake constable Galen Webb, whose longing to take an active role in the case is torpedoed by his quick temper and unwillingness to share everything he knows. Could he possibly be at the bottom of all this? Another well-crafted case beautifully built on a foundation of the local geography Doiron knows so well.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

July 24, 2023
Doiron’s long-running series featuring Maine game warden and criminal investigator Mike Bowditch delivers one of its most satisfying shocks yet in this 14th entry (after 2022’s Hatchet Island). Bowditch is celebrating his engagement to Stacey Stevens on a lake in central Maine when a collision on the water disrupts the festivities. Once Bowditch reaches the area, the boats are gone, leaving only a severed human arm with a wristwatch still attached. Galen Webb identifies the likely victim as Kip Whitcomb, the wealthy owner of a private island in the middle of the lake, who is now missing. As Bowditch sets about determining whether Kip’s dismemberment was an accident or an act of foul play, reports surface that the playboy had been cheating on his wife with a younger woman who has also disappeared. Just when the plotting begins to flirt with predictability, Doiron pulls off a sucker-punch fair-play twist that puts entirely new suspects in play. That jolt, combined with vivid descriptions of the Maine woods and authentic depictions of the forensic science, make this a winner.

July 12, 2023
In the newest addition to the Mike Bowditch Mysteries series (following Hatchet Island, 2022), the game warden is back and the good news is he's engaged. The bad news is that on the night of a celebratory party on Golden Pond, one of central Maine's toniest lakes, Mike and his fianc�e, Stacy, witness a gruesome boating accident. When Mike heads out to investigate, he finds a man's severed arm and uses his seemingly inexhaustible skill set to find the rest of the victim's corpse and mark its location. The police detectives and dive team then discover a second body, this one a woman's, whose death seems to have been no accident. Mike questions her husband, a member of a local biker gang, and ends up with a black eye so serious that Stacy worries he's "going to look like one of those ex-linebackers who can't walk or form a coherent thought." During the powerfully written denouement, set amidst portentous meteors, Mike meets his match in a singularly lethal opponent who has been lurking in the background. Doiron's crisp first-person narrative is thoroughly absorbing and richly atmospheric. Readers will enjoy every pine needle-crunching step. Recommend to fans of Nevada Barr and C. J. Box.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.