Paul Doiron--Hatchet Island: A Mike Bowditch Mystery

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The eerie, windswept Hatchet Island off the coast of Maine becomes the site of a double murder and a disappearance in this thriller from bestselling author Paul Doiron.

A call for help from a former colleague leads Maine game warden investigator Mike Bowditch and his girlfriend Stacey Stevens on a sea kayaking trip to a research station far off the coast. Stacey spent summers interning on the island, a sanctuary for endangered seabirds, and they are shocked by the atmosphere of tension they encounter when they come ashore. The biologists are being threatened and stalked by a mysterious boatman who they suspect is trespassing on the refuge late at night. And now the sanctuary's enigmatic founder, whose mind has been slowly unraveling, has gone missing.

Camped on an islet for the night, Mike and Stacey waken to the sound of a gunshot. When they return to the refuge at dawn, their darkest fears are confirmed: two of the three researchers have been brutally murdered and the third has disappeared, along with the island skiff. Mike's quest to find the missing man leads to a nearby island owned by a world-renowned photographer and his equally brilliant wife. The inhabitants of this private kingdom quickly close ranks, and Mike increasingly comes to believe that someone in the village knows more about the killings than they dare admit.

With no one to trust and miles from shore, Mike Bowditch must stop a ruthless murderer determined to make sure a terrifying secret never sees the light of day.

Bestselling author Paul Doiron is the former editor in chief of Down East: The Magazine of Maine. A native of Maine, he attended Yale University, where he graduated with a degree in English, and he holds an MFA in creative writing from Emerson College. The Poacher's Son won the Barry award and the Strand award for Best First Novel, and has been nominated for the Edgar, Anthony, and Macavity awards in the same category. As an experienced outdoorsman and naturalist, he is skilled in fishing, hunting, canoeing, and wilderness survival, and knows the secrets of the Maine woods as well as his protagonist, Mike Bowditch. He lives on a trout stream in coastal Maine with his wife, poet Kristen Lindquist.