Review: "Skin and Bones and Other Mike Bowditch Short Stories" by Paul Doiron

 

Skin and Bones and Other Mike Bowditch Short Stories by Paul Doiron Minotaur Books, 2025   Paul Doiron’s Skin and Bones, is an engaging collection of eight mystery stories. The tales are set in the world of Maine game warden, Mike Bowditch—Doiron has written fifteen Bowditch novels so far—but a few are told from the perspective of Bowditch’s mentor and retired warden, Charley Stevens. Many of the stories are closer to novelette than short story length, which allows Doiron the room to paint his characters with a rich hue and his rural Maine setting with vivid color. Even better, he does all this without an unnecessary word or losing the mystery for the trees. “Bear Trap”—which is one of Charley Stevens’s tales—is a play on the impossible crime. As a young warden Charley is confronted by an almost mythical hermit—nicknamed Sweet Tooth because of his proclivity for stealing candy—with a knack for burgling camps and then disappearing like a ghost. When Sweet Tooth raids the stores of a summer camp for underprivileged boys, Charley decides it’s time to introduce Sweet Tooth to Lady Justice. But first he must discover how the thief comes and goes so easily. In “Rabid,” Charley Stevens is called to the isolated home of John Hussey. Hussey, like Charley, is a Vietnam veteran but unlike Charley, Hussey’s post-war behavior has been erratic. When Charley arrives at the house, Hussey’s Vietnamese wife, Giang, says her husband was bitten by a bat. But Charley is more worried that Hussey is abusing his wife and daughter. Charley’s own wife gets involved in this one, and both she and Giang believe Hussey may have rabies. There is a nice surprise ending with a delicious slice of morality in the recipe. Something of a Sherlock Holmes pastiche, “The Caretaker”—which is narrated by Bowditch—stars Charley as a Holmes-like detective and Bowditch in Dr. Watson’s role. Together Charley and Bowditch investigate a harassment complaint by a Boston couple while staying in their backwoods summer home. Charley does a fine job of detection—he seems to notice everything, no matter how small—and Bowditch is duly impressed with Charley’s almost supernatural powers. But it is the solution, while revealing a serious crime, that makes “The Caretaker” downright fun. “Sheep’s Clothing,” which is the backwoods version of an English village murder mystery, finds the recently demoted Bowditch investigating what seems to be a murder-suicide of a couple living in poverty on a large patch of land. But Bowditch isn’t sure the husband killed his wife or himself. There are multiple suspects—the dead husband, an estranged son, his truly awful fiancée, the fiancée’s unempathetic brother are only four of them. There is more than one well-timed twist, which makes for bunches of fun. Skin and Bones is my first experience reading Paul Doiron’s fiction. The high-quality of the writing, the tight plotting, and the subtle humor (especially when Charley Stevens is on the page) impressed me enough that I’m planning to find another title in the Bowditch series to read. And likely another one after that, which is assuming the novels are as good as the tales presented here.

Check out Skin and Bones at Amazon—click here for the Kindle edition and here for the trade paperback.