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Bad Little Falls by Paul Doiron (view source)
Revision as of 16:31, 7 September 2020
, 16:31, 7 September 2020no edit summary
Bowditch, being the main character of two previous Doiron novels, is initially presented standing in front of the frozen solid body of a zebra out on a hunting range in Maine. It is a powerful, bizarre, and evocative image to open with, but after this chapter my interest in Bowditch was, unfortunately, left to die with the zebra. With Bowditch having been featured in other books before means that the casual reader taking ''Bad Little Falls'' as a standalone novel is somewhat left out in the cold. Whilst the narrative isn’t reliant on the past there are multiple instances which seem as though they should be poignant, but instead left me for one wondering what on earth the bizarre references are connected to in Bowditch's past.
Overall then, it seems that the rather promising plot of Bad Little Falls is somewhat buried in the snow. Whilst the idea of someone being suspected of killing his best friend, and with just one person on his side who hasn’t written him off immediately as guilty wouldn’t have exactly been ground-breaking, combining it with the location could have been. Whilst it feels as though C J Box’s summation of the plot as having a ‘terrific sense of place’ was through lack of other positives, this shouldn’t detract from the truth of the phrase. Had Doiron chosen a slightly less clichéd plot, and avoided using too many descriptions of Bowditch’s would -be girlfriend, his use of the frozen bogs and wild snowstorms of Maine could have made an astounding and unique backdrop to the mystery of a stone -cold killer.
For more crime fiction with a strong sense of place any work of Karin Slaughter's will fit the bill, with [[Skin Privilege by Karin Slaughter|Skin Privilege]] being a particularly powerful offering. You might also enjoy [[Massacre Pond by Paul Doiron]].
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