It’s a Mystery: “The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes”

One Last Lie
By Paul Doiron
Minotaur, 2020

Mike Bowditch, the star of Paul Doiron’s award-winning series, is back. He first appeared as a Maine-based Game Warden in The Poacher’s Son (2010). That debut novel won the Barry award and the Strand award for Best First Novel and was nominated for the Edgar, Anthony and Macavity awards in the same category. Since then, Mike has worked his way up to Warden Investigator, and last time around in Almost Midnight (2019), he unraveled a massive criminal conspiracy that forced him to work outside the law.

One Last Lie, the 11th in the series, opens in Florida where Mike is checking out a candidate for the Maine Warden Service. Along the very rugged way, he is “recruited” into a python roundup in the Everglades. And by the time it’s over, he is in sync with the champion python-catcher, Buster Lee, about the massive python presence in the area: “Florida is the world capital of unintended consequences.” 

Back in Maine, Mike finds that his beloved mentor and surrogate father, retired game warden Charley Stevens, has vanished into the thousand miles of forest along the Canadian border. He left uncharacteristically without explanation and only a cryptic note for his wife: “I love you, Ora. I’ll be back as soon as I can get a puzzle sorted out.” What’s more, the old pilot who was famous for never driving anywhere he could fly, had taken his truck not his Cessna floatplane. This could only mean that his ultimate destination was inaccessible by air. 

Charley’s last words to Mike now haunt him: “Never trust a man without secrets.” He suspects Charley’s disappearance may be connected to an antique badge the old man found at a flea market—a  badge that prompted Charley to reopen a 15-year-old case involving a young warden, the badge owner, who never returned from an undercover mission to flush out a notorious poaching ring and whose body is still missing.

Mike soon discovers that reopening a cold case is a risky business. Powerful people, including his fellow wardens—one of whom might be a killer—will do anything to keep it closed. Putting himself in Charley’s shoes, so to speak, he uncovers a note addressed to him. It includes the ominous words that Charley fears: “…I made the worst mistake a man can make in this life.” Mike has a strong hunch he is talking about taking the life of another human being. Probing for the truth puts him in grave danger from vicious attack dogs  to deadly currents that require savvy canoe paddling. He soon finds out that men with compelling secrets, including law enforcement officers he thought he knew well, can’t be trusted. Even worse, he is forced to question his faith in the man he sees as his father:

Who are you Charley?

What have you done?

What do you require me to do?

Now, for the first time in years, I found myself seeing the face of someone I loved in my mind’s eye and wondering about the stranger behind the mask.

Doiron’s skillful whodunit plotting, coupled with a motley assortment of vividly wrought characters, and his superb evocation of the Maine woods setting makes One Last Lie one of the best entries in the series. It is elegant and unforgettable. 

—Irma Heldman is a veteran publishing executive and book reviewer with a penchant for mysteries. One of her favorite gigs was her magazine column “On the Docket” under the pseudonym O. L. Bailey.