Skin and Bones is another short story that is peripheral to Paul Doiron’s series about Maine Game Warden, Mike Bowditch. This story takes place when Mike is only a few years into his service as a Maine Game Warden. Like several other short stories in the series, it focuses more on Mike’s mentor, retired Maine Game Warden and pilot Charley Stevens. However, the story also involved Mike’s late father, who was a well-known poacher in the northern Maine woods.

Mike Bowditch pulls up to Charley’s house with a deceased bald eagle in the back of his truck. He’s angry about the bird being killed. It was still on the endangered species list at the time. He asks Charley if he’s ever seen anything like it in all his years as a Game Warden. Charley then regales him with a tale from his days on patrol.

On his way back to his house one evening, Charley is stopped in his truck by Jack Bowditch. Jack has the body of a dead bald eagle in the back of his truck, shot through the eye. Jack may be a poacher himself, but he is angry about the national symbol being so callously killed. He’s sure he knows who did it, a young poacher by the name of Tim Grindle. Charley appreciates the information and says he’ll follow it up. Jack wants to go along with him, but Charley tells him no.

When Charley shows up at the home of the two orphaned Grindle brothers, he’s attempting to discuss what happened with Tim’s older brother, Ed. Jack shows up in the middle of the conversation. Charley ends up running interference between the brothers as well as between Jack and Tim. Although not always a law-abiding citizen himself, Ed knows that killing an eagle crosses a line. In a fit of anger, Ed hurls a log at his brother, which strikes him in the chest. Tim then disappears into the wintry woods in bare feet and without a coat.

Charley tries to pursue the young poacher, but he’s coming up empty. He checks various haunts and talks to his girlfriend. Jack seems to think he’s part of the investigation, and Charley doesn’t warn him off. After being so certain that Tim was the poacher, he comes back to Charley and says it wasn’t Tim after all, but someone else.

This book hooked me early on. I had several ideas how it would end, but Doiron managed to completely surprise me with an ending straight out of his fellow Maine author, Stephen King’s, playbook. It was grueling to read that part. The story seems to read like a missing persons case with what I knew would be a tragic conclusion, but Doiron really dove a bit into horror with it.

I was surprised at how much Charley let Jack participate in the investigation. Although Jack was in the military like Charley was, their paths after leaving the service couldn’t be more different. Charley is assertive when he needs to be, so I thought it was a bit unlike him not to put Jack in his place and out of the investigation. Of course, this gives the retired Maine Game Warden something to share with his young protege about his late father.

I did enjoy Skin and Bones as a short story. It gives more background to the character of Charley as well as Mike’s father, who died in the first book in the series. The characters encountered in this book have a very real feel to them as well, something Doiron is very good at capturing. People who live on the fringes of society tend to end up as caricatures in literature, but Doiron makes them very human.