cbr17bingo Favorite
Well, there is a massacre of sorts involved here, but Massacre Pond is identified as being somewhere else than this locale, and isn’t really involved with this story. Makes you wonder who chooses a title, and I suspect in this case, it wasn’t Doiron.
Anyhoo, the massacre victims consist of ten moose. All shot point blank on a game refuge, and clearly not for the meat. Someone (make that two someones) are clearly trying to send a message. There is a season for moose hunting but this wasn’t it. Mike and his fellow game wardens are righteously appalled.
The property is on a huge estate owned by the extremely wealthy Elizabeth Morse, animal rights activist. She has been trying to buy up surrounding properties to donate to the feds as a National Park, something the local residents want no part of. And that (being a Mike Bowditch book) is when the murders begin, except people this time. Can the poor guy help it if, when all he wants is to live the peaceful life of a game warden, people keep offing other people in his vicinity? No wonder his superiors have him on an extended cruise of the hinterlands of the Maine wilderness. And one of the reasons I am so fond of this series is that the author is so good at describing these hinterlands.
Eastern Maine is beautiful country – not particularly mountainous, but expansive and largely empty of people, with evergreen forests that stretch to the horizons and blue lakes so numerous as to almost defy counting. And dirt-poor as the residents may be, no one is looking to be the next tourist attraction. They’ve got south east coast Maine for that.