73. The Bone Orchard by Paul Doiron

#5 Mike Bowditch, Maine Game Warden
listened to Audio/Overdrive  borrowed through Pima Country Library
2014 Minotaur Books
306 pgs.
Adult Mystery
Finished August 4, 2018
Goodreads rating: 4.06 - 1923 ratings
My rating: 5 - Doiron keeps getting better and better
Setting:  Contemporary Maine - back and forth between Portland, Rockland, and Aroostook County

First line/s: "When I think of Jimmy Gammon now, I remember the way he was before the war: a redheaded, freckle-faced kid with a body like a greyhound, all arms and legs, with a jutting rib cage he'd gotten running up and down the hills of midcoast Maine."

My comments:  Paul Doiron keeps on getting better and better.  This installment was wonderfully written, and traveled up and down Route 1 - and Interstate 95 - from as far south as Portland and as far north as Presque Isle.  His Maine descriptions were terrific, as were his knowledge of the flora and fauna of Maine's springtime.  The story was believable and interesting, the mystery unfolding at just the right pace.  Can't get enough!  And it ends with him finally taking his future into his own, more mature, hands.  Yippee!

Goodreads synopsis:  In the aftermath of a family tragedy, Mike Bowditch has left the Maine Warden Service and is working as a fishing guide in the North Woods. But when his mentor Sgt. Kathy Frost is forced to kill a troubled war veteran in an apparent case of "suicide by cop," he begins having second thoughts about his decision. 
          Now Kathy finds herself the target of a government inquiry and outrage from the dead soldier's platoon mates. Soon she finds herself in the sights of a sniper, as well. When the sergeant is shot outside her farmhouse, Mike joins the hunt to find the mysterious man responsible. To do so, the ex-warden must plunge into his friend's secret past—even as a beautiful woman from Mike's own past returns, throwing into jeopardy his tentative romance with wildlife biologist Stacey Stevens. 
          As Kathy Frost lies on the brink of death and a dangerous shooter stalks the blueberry barrens of central Maine, Bowditch is forced to confront the choices he has made and determine, once and for all, the kind of man he truly is, in The Bone Orchard by Paul Doiron.