First time reading this author and I found it quite enjoyable. A good mystery and some interesting characters for sure. Plan to read more in this series. ( )

KNIFE CREEK is book eight in the Mike Bowditch series and together with his girlfriend Stacey, Mike is tasked with shooting some wild boars that are tearing up the forest and the farms. But, they make an awful discovery, the body of a baby has been buried in a shallow grave, left for the pigs to find and eat. If Mike and Stacey hadn't unearthed the grave nothing would have been left to find after the pigs had been done. It gets even stranger when the DNA links the baby to a young woman that disappeared four years earlier while rafting with some friends. Everyone now thinks she is dead, but apparently, she must have survived. What happened to her?

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If you love Maine. If you love Mysteries. If you dream of being a Game Warden or just want to live vicariously through one then this series is a must! I discovered it when mentioned by one of my very favorite authors, Nevada Barr. In my case, the books put me in a place I love and mention towns that I know. I am a New Englander and seek out books that take place in my "homeland". Paul Doiron's books are wonderful and if you take the next step and listen to them audibly then you will get to giggle at the Maine accent. These are great mysteries that should not be missed. ( )

Mike Bowditch and his girlfriend Stacey are out in the Maine woods to find and kill some feral hogs. This is part of Mike's job as a game warden. They also find the corpse of a baby girl half-buried along the trail. Thus, Mike is drawn into the investigation of who she is and how she came to be there.
I always enjoy this series, partly because I live in Maine and the author frequently mentions areas and people I know, and partly because it's different from some other crime series. For one thing, there's a big difference in being a game warden and a policeman or detective. Wardens have many of the same duties as police but also operate in deep woods, on rushing rivers, mountains, or lakes.
Another reason I find this series different is that Mike is young (29 in this book) and makes mistakes, often only saved by luck. He can be brash and blunt but is also courageous and aware of his own limitations. His behavior and character make the series more believable and interesting in my opinion rather than those detectives who are Sherlock Holmes clones. This is another good book in the series, and I'm looking forward to the next one. ( )

This is the eighth book in Doiron’s crime series featuring Maine game warden Mike Bowditch. (In Maine, game wardens are full law-enforcement officers, with all the powers of state troopers: “They are the ‘off-road police.’”)

Mike is now 29, has been a game warden for six years, and has been dating Stacy Stevens for two years. Currently they are living together. Stacy is a wildlife biologist with the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, but her job, along with those of many other field biologists, is in jeopardy because of tax cuts. Stacy is thinking they should leave Maine, but Mike has applied for a promotion to warden investigator (i.e., a detective) and he loves Maine too much to want to leave.

Stacy, disaffected from her workplace, skips out to help Mike hunt feral swine near the Saco River. [In real life the swine are invading New Hampshire but not yet Maine.] They come upon the body of an infant not long dead. Further, it appears the body was left there on purpose so that the pigs would eat the evidence. It is so hard to imagine anyone would do such a thing, that it almost goes undetected. As Mike observes ruefully, “Good men, charged with protecting the public from harm, [have] been unable to bring themselves to believe that monsters walk among us in human form. . . . . the persistence of evil in the world is often made possible by failures of imagination.”

DNA connects the body to a girl, Casey Donaldson, who disappeared four years earlier and was presumed dead. As Mike starts asking questions, it seems like everyone in the area is keeping secrets, and more deaths follow. Mike becomes convinced Casey is still alive but was not complicit; rather she was being held captive [although I never quite understood how he came to that conclusion]. He is determined to find her, in spite of discouragement from the state troopers and resistance of the locals. Suspense builds into a terrifying denouement.

Evaluation: I like the series a lot for its vivid descriptions of the flora and fauna of Maine, and the detailed information on the Maine Warden Service. Both are central to a state characterized by a heavily forested interior, many waterways and inland fisheries, a plethora of wildlife resources, and the prominence of recreational outdoor sports. Doiron always manages to incorporate a lot of background on Maine into his stories. This one in particular has a great build-up of suspense. ( )