Widowmaker by Paul Doiron

Published by St. Martin's/Minotaur Books on June 14, 2016

I have to start with a rant about the protagonist because he’s just ridiculous. Mike Bowditch is a game warden in Maine who is paranoid about the risks that face game wardens. As far as I can tell, no game warden has been murdered in the line of duty in Maine since 1886, so when Bowditch sneaks up on a car parked outside his house in broad daylight because he fears the unknown driver wants to kill him -- and continues to keep his hand on his gun because the unarmed woman behind the wheel makes the suspicious claim that she needs to pee -- I had to think it might be time for Bowditch to retire.

Bowditch is happy that he’s been issued an assault rifle because wardens are “in serious danger of being outgunned in every firefight.” Are scofflaws who fish without a license a serious threat to get into shootouts with wardens? I guess Paul Doiron didn’t read the “North Woods Lawless” series in the Portland Press Herald about Maine game wardens who “padded evidence, provided alcohol to people who were being investigated and invented events that did not occur” in their investigations of game violations. Nothing in there about shootouts.

Bowditch also has disturbing ideas about his powers as a law enforcement officer. He seems to believe that he would have the right to kill an unconscious person who (while still conscious) tried to stab him. Even for a cop, the right to use deadly force in self-defense ends when the threat ends, but Bowditch must have skipped that class. He also believes the myth propogated by law enforcement that “Where there are drugs, there are almost always guns,” which statistically isn’t even close to being true. He has the typical moralizer’s inability to understand, or to feel compassion for, people who come out on the wrong side of his harsh judgment. Bowditch is, in short, narrow-minded, simplistic, and dull. On the other hand, he likes dogs, so he can’t be all bad.

The mediocre plot did not overcome my dislike of the protagonist. A woman wants Bowditch to find her son, who disappeared after being required to register as a sex offender because his girlfriend was a minor. Bowditch doesn’t want to play private investigator but the woman drops a bombshell on him that he can’t ignore. Eventually Bowditch tumbles to an improbable conspiracy that involves sex offender assassinations, leading to the shootout he craves.

Doiron’s prose is smooth and the novel’s mountainous setting is convincing. The plot is less convincing, but it’s not as outlandish as many modern thrillers. The novel’s steady pace makes Widowmaker easy to read. Widowmaker therefore has positive attributes, and readers who think Bowditch is interesting or heroic might like this more than I did. Still, I cannot recommend Widowmaker without significant reservations.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS