NYTBR Enjoys The View

In her recent Crime column in The New York Times Book Review, Marilyn Stasio takes a look at THE POACHER'S SON and likes what she sees:

Paul Doiron is the editor in chief of Down East magazine, so it shouldn't be a total surprise that his first novel, THE POACHER'S SON, comes with stunning vistas of the dense forests and wild rivers that have impressed visitors to Maine ever since Benedict Arnold passed through on his march to Quebec in 1775. Along with nostalgic laments about the old-growth woods and modest settle ments that have already fallen to civilization, Doiron provides wonderful scenes of present-day bear-tracking and man-hunting through the kind of terrain that attracts hikers, hunters and the odd "paranoid militia freak" like the one causing so much trouble in this story.

The novel's eye-popping scenes, idyllic and otherwise, are conveyed by Doiron's narrator, Mike Bowditch, a rookie game warden who loves the "solitary and morbid profession" that is threatened when his father, Jack, a notorious poacher, is accused of murder. "He was a bar brawler, not a terrorist," Mike insists, swearing loyalty to a man who may not be worth his son's faith in him. Jack is still a flamboyant character, one of the best sights in a book that has plenty of natural wonders.