Stay Hidden
A Novel
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4.1 • 18 Ratings
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
A supposed hunting accident becomes a dangerously complicated murder investigation in Stay Hidden, the intricately-plotted new thriller from Paul Doiron featuring Maine Game Warden Mike Bowditch.
A woman has been shot to death by a deer hunter on an island off the coast of Maine. To newly promoted Warden Investigator Mike Bowditch, the case seems open and shut. But as soon as he arrives on remote Maquoit Island he discovers mysteries piling up one on top of the other.
The hunter now claims he didn’t fire the fatal shot and the evidence proves he’s telling the truth. Bowditch begins to suspect the secretive community might be covering up the identity of whoever killed the woman, known as Ariel Evans. The controversial author was supposedly writing a book about the island's notorious hermit. So why are there no notes in her rented cottage?
The biggest blow comes the next day when the weekly ferry arrives and off steps the dead woman herself. Ariel Evans is alive, well, and determined to solve her own “murder” even if it upsets Mike Bowditch’s investigation and makes them both targets of an elusive killer who will do anything to conceal his crimes.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The shooting of investigative journalist Ariel Evans on Maine's Maquoit Island drives Doiron's outstanding ninth novel featuring game warden Mike Bowditch (after 2017's Knife Creek). Ariel apparently took a house on the island as part of her preparation for her next book a reexamination of the 20-year-old case of Blake Markman, a Hollywood producer who was suspected of intentionally setting fire to his home with his wife inside, but who evaded criminal charges and now lives alone on a small island near Maquoit. Though the initial police report is that the victim, who was hanging up some laundry to dry, was mistaken for a deer by hunter Kenneth Crowley, who confessed to pulling the trigger in error, Mike later learns that Crowley only found the body and never confessed to anything. That the dead woman was having an affair with one of the locals provides a possible murder motive, but the case takes a bizarre turn when a woman turns up claiming to be Ariel. Doiron balances nuanced characterizations and intelligent plotting perfectly. Author tour.
