When two female hikers disappear in the Hundred Mile Wilderness--the most remote stretch along the entire Appalachian Trail--Maine game warden Mike Bowditch joins the desperate search to find them.
Hope turns to despair after two unidentified corpses are discovered, their bones picked clean by coyotes. Do the bodies belong to the missing hikers? And were they killed by the increasingly aggressive wild dogs?
Soon all of Maine is gripped by a fear of deadly coyote attacks. But Bowditch has his doubts. His new girlfriend, wildlife biologist Stacey Stevens, insists the scavengers are being wrongly blamed. She believes a murderer may be hiding in the offbeat community of hikers, hippies, and woodsmen at the edge of the Hundred Mile Wilderness. When Stacey herself disappears along the Appalachian Trail, the hunt for answers becomes personal.
Can Mike Bowditch find the woman he loves before the most dangerous animal in the North Woods strikes again?
The series
In the dense, whispering woods of Maine, justice isn’t handed down in courtrooms—it’s hunted, tracked, and sometimes lost to the wild. That’s the world readers step into with the Mike Bowditch series, a brooding, atmospheric journey through crimes that are as tangled and unforgiving as the forests they’re born in.
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At the heart of these wilderness thrillers is a flawed but fiercely principled game warden whose badge grants him little authority—and even less protection—against the quiet violence of rural life. As he patrols the vast, remote territories where civilization thins and loyalties are buried deeper than any trail marker, he’s pulled into investigations that often pit him against his own past, the people he’s sworn to serve, and the brutal indifference of nature itself.
What sets this series apart isn’t just the crimes—it’s the terrain. The stories unfold in a starkly beautiful landscape where survival is never guaranteed, and the line between hunter and hunted can vanish in a snowstorm. The writing is lean, evocative, and often laced with a quiet dread that builds with every page, mirroring the unforgiving wild that shapes every decision.
Critically praised for its authenticity and emotional depth, the series draws in fans of literary crime fiction who appreciate tightly-woven plots grounded in real-world stakes. These are not just whodunits—they’re stories about consequence, about what it costs to do the right thing when no one else will.
For those who crave mystery novels steeped in nature, rich with moral complexity, and guided by a voice that understands both the darkness of the woods and the men who walk them, this is a journey worth taking—though it may not always lead where you expect.
#1 · 2010The Poacher's Son 
#2 · 2011Trespasser 
#3 · 2012Bad Little Falls 
#4 · 2013Massacre Pond 
#4.5 · 2014The Bear Trap 
#5 · 2014The Bone Orchard 
#6 · 2015The Precipice 
#7 · 2016Widowmaker 
#8 · 2017Knife Creek 
#8.5 · 2018Rabid 
#9 · 2018Stay Hidden 
#9.5 · 2019Backtrack 
#10 · 2019Almost Midnight 
#10.5 · 2020The Imposter 
#11 · 2020One Last Lie 
#11.5 · 2021The Caretaker 
#12 · 2021Dead by Dawn 
#12.5 · 2025Skin and Bones 
#13 · 2022Hatchet Island 
#13.5 · 2023Snakebit 
#14 · 2023Dead Man's Wake 
#15 · 2024Pitch Dark 
#15.5 · 2026Blaze Orange 
#16 · 2026Storm Tide 
#17 · 2027Cold Front Be the first reviewer
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