Toto, I don’t think we’re in Cabot Cove anymore.
For the most part, popular culture associates the intersection of mysteries and the state of Maine with Murder She Wrote. You know, the circa ‘80s episodic TV series that featured the quite brilliant Angela Lansbury as a bicycle-riding, Miss Marple-esque mystery writer in a fictional Maine seaside hamlet, surrounded by quirky, but good-hearted, friends and neighbors.
That is not the Maine of Paul Doiron’s series.
Paul Doiron’s Maine is actually two Maines, the more affluent, suburban coastal areas and the interior and northern sections of the state that are less well known and traveled. To paraphrase Paul’s description, these are the parts of Maine that are on the way to Canada by routes no one takes.
This is the world where Paul’s character Game Warden—and in the fifth book, The Bone Orchard— former Game Warden Mike Bowditch, lives and works. It’s a world that’s full of beautiful—but indifferent—nature that contrasts with the cruelty of humans against both other humans and the world in which they live.
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