SKIN AND BONES

Eight stories, originally published between 2017 and 2023, following the adventures of Maine game warden Mike Bowditch.

In truth, it’s quite a while before Mike takes center stage because half of these stories are told to him by his friend and mentor, retired warden Charley Stevens, whose narratives are provoked by events in the present. In “The Bear Trap,” Charley goes hunting for Sweet Tooth, a hermit who’s reported to have carried out nearly 100 burglaries some 20 years ago. In “Backtrack,” Charley recalls his search for a physician who’s gone missing from a group expedition. And in “Rabid,” Charley has a series of increasingly disturbing encounters with John Hussey, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran reportedly bitten by a bat, and his Vietnamese wife, Giang. Mike gets his own story, more or less, when he has to track down the man who’s been impersonating him in “The Imposter.” He returns in “The Caretaker” to deal with Violet and Josiah Baker, newcomers from the South Shore whose cottage has been vandalized but not robbed; in “Snakebit,” a third-person story introducing Ted and Fay Gorecki, a crackpot couple whose plan to reintroduce rattlesnakes into the wilderness goes seriously haywire; and in “Sheep’s Clothing,” in which he investigates the apparent murder-suicide of John and Martha Witham. The title story, the longest and finest thing here, uses the present-day shooting of a bald eagle to motivate still another tale Charley tells Mike about a long-ago eagle shooting, this one involving Mike’s abusive father. Like all the other stories here, this one grows as if unbidden from the natural environment Doiron knows so well and builds gradually to include more and more complications, this time ending in a shattering climax.

Welcome to Maine. Make sure you’re locked and loaded.