Review: "Storm Tide," Paul Doiron

When NetGalley sends me an invitation to download the upcoming Mike Bowditch novel, I do not hesitate to say yes. And then start reading. Immediately.

The Maine game warden is back on patrol duty after his shenanigans in Canada in Pitch Dark. Will he ever return to investigator status? The question hovers over Mike for the entire book.

It depends on whether he can keep his nose clean, and fans of the series know that though Mike has grown more mature over the years, sticking to the straight and narrow is impossible for him.

This is true even though he’s stationed close to home in the Belfast-Camden area. Wife Stacey is expecting. Billy Cronk and family live nearby. Wolf dog Shadow prowls his outdoor refuge. If only Mike could be content with living a quiet life.

Nope. He responds to a fire at a McMansion. A neighbor, Karen Kershaw, stands outside the burning building, holding a baby. Mike tries to save the father, but fails. He’s devastated, but then learns the man was implicated in a child’s disappearance and likely death.

Mike wants to investigate the fire, even though it’s a state police matter. But when he tries to question the neighbor, she disappears. Meanwhile, he starts getting ominous messages from somebody who knows a lot about him. In fact, the stalker seems to have interacted with Mike when he covered the Machias area, a decade or more ago.

Mike is determined to find out what’s happening in both situations. Are they connected? He’s not exactly reckless, but he does take chances, and gets himself (and Billy) in trouble (to put it mildly) more than once.

But has he ever faced three villains before? One is an evil genius, the worst kind of bad guy. Then there’s the huge, dim-witted but single-minded thug. The third thinks he has a moral agenda, and that includes killing Mike if necessary.

And what about the mysterious neighbor, Karen Kershaw? How does she fit into all this?

Whew. Luckily for my blood pressure, the story is stretched out over nearly a year. The brief interludes of calm (a visit to Charley and Ora Stevens’ homestead always soothes me) don’t thwart the pacing of the book. It’s a page-turner, with the hair-raising scenes nicely (thankfully) complemented by the characters beloved by readers and the richly evoked Maine setting.

Take the scene where Mike is in the headquarters of Maine’s Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, just across the Kennebec River from where I write. He gazes out a window and sees a sturgeon leap out of the water.

After everything Mike endures in these pages, a flash of the unexpected and beautiful feels exactly right. It’s the kind of detail that stays with you long after you turn the final page.

 

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Storm Tide will be released on June 30, 2026.