Twenty-five-year-old Mike Bowditch is a passionate Maine State Ranger. It’s been seven months since the ordeal with his father, Jack Bowditch, at Rum Pond (consider reading Doiron’s award-nominated debut novel, The Poacher’s Son have a preface to Sin).
Bowditch responds to a dispatcher’s call to investigate a deer-car collision on Parker Point Road. He arrives to find a damaged red rental sedan and deer blood stains in the middle of the road, but no driver and no deer.
What happened to the driver and the deer? Who anonymously alerted authorities from the pay phone in Smitty’s garage, two miles away, about the accident?
The car rental agreement found in the glove compartment indicates that the current driver is Ashley Kim, 23, of Cambridge, Massachusetts.
State Trooper Curt Hutchins arrives at the scene shortly after Bowditch. He assures her that he will continue to pursue Kim, now that it is a state police matter. Bowditch is skeptical. Something is not right and Bowditch knows it.
Bowditch is forced to do his own investigation into Ashley Kim’s disappearance. He enlists the help of City Clerk MaryBeth Fickett and legendary retired Guardian pilot Charley Stevens. Stevens befriended Bowditch while searching for his father.
Fickett discovers that Hans Westergaard owns a summer house not far from the crash site. Westergaard is also from Cambridge, Massachusetts and a professor at Harvard Business School. The Kim/Westergaard connection is too close to ignore. Bowditch calls Westergaard’s wife, Jill, and learns that Kim was her husband’s research assistant. She also informs him that Hans left for a conference the day before and hasn’t been heard from since.
Bowditch and Stevens explore the spacious Westergaard waterfront home where they discover the mutilated corpse of Ashley Kim. The killer had carved the word WHORE into her body. With no sign of Westergaard, the first suspicions center on a romantic relationship between the two gone wrong.
Seven years ago, Earland Jefferts, an affable and handsome former lobsterman, was convicted of murdering twenty-year-old Nikki Donatelli. The crime occurred on a hot July night after drinking and seducing at the Harpoon Bar. Curiously, Bowditch learns that Donatelli’s body also had the word WHORE carved into it.
The J-Team, led by Jeffert’s aunt Lou Bates, is determined to beat him in another test; convinced that the prosecution did a botched job of presenting evidence. They approach Bowditch to join his mission. He initially refuses. But given the similarities between the Kim and Donatelli murders, he finds himself drawn into investigating Jeffert’s conviction.
Danica Marshall is the Deputy Attorney General who helped prosecute Earland Jefferts. Often referred to as a “court sex symbol” and “Black Widow”, she warns Bowditch to stop investigating Ashley Kim’s death and review the details of Jeffert’s conviction.
The Square Deal Diner is the gossip center of town. Walking in, Bowditch has been the talk of the town, both during his father’s disappearance and Ashley Kim’s murder.
The adventure accentuates sin, while Bowditch engages in a death-defying ATV chase on an icy and snowy night to lure out local Calvin Barter. Bowditch is sure he is the culprit whose ATV tracks have been ruining his neighbor Hank Varnum’s property: “I shifted to a lower gear and gassed it up, looking for as much momentum as possible and hoping my wheels wouldn’t lose ice traction. surface.”
Bowditch puts up his live-in girlfriend, Sarah, during college. Despite her well-to-do upbringing, she was drawn to her pure love for the outdoors. She “recognized something wild beneath my clean exterior and, like many good girls from proper families, she was turned on by the smell of danger.”
Their affinity for danger, both during the search for their father and now in the Ashley Kim murder investigation, has taken its toll on their relationship. Her tolerance for her availability, both physically and emotionally, has reached a peak for her, especially now that she is secretly pregnant.
Well-written fiction mirrors reality, often featuring insightful dialogue. One of the best lines Sin worth contemplating is “You never really know someone until they’re no longer in your life.”
If you enjoy reading crime fiction, you’ll appreciate Doiron’s new voice. He is one that is sure to become more recognizable over time.
The 2012 Bouchercon World Mystery Convention will be held in Cleveland, Ohio, October 4-7. For more information on this gathering of some of the best crime novel writers in the world, visit: http://bouchercon2012.com/
