The Poacher's Son
What can you tell our readers about your new book The Poacher's Son?
It's the story of a Maine game warden named Mike Bowditch whose estranged father is accused of killing of a cop. Mike is the last person who should believe in his dad's innocence, and yet when his father reaches out to him for help, Mike finds himself grappling with unresolved emotions from his childhood. He knows his father is a bad guy in lots of ways, but he doesn't believe he's a murderer. Every police officer in the state is now searching for the cop killer, and Mike decides to risk his career trying to save a man he realizes he still loves.
Mike is a game warden by day, why did you choose this profession for him as a character?
Maine is the most forested state in the U.S., and game wardens here essentially function as police officers everywhere there isn't a road (which is most places). They're involved in every kind of criminal case, from the expected hunting and fishing infractions to drug busts, finding missing children, recovering drowned bodies from lakes, and assisting in murder investigations. I thought it was a fantastic profession for the hero of a detective story.
Why did you want to explore the relationship between a son and a father?
Masculinity as a concept really interests me. I went to an all-boys Jesuit high school so I grew up in this hyper-masculine environment where bullying was part of the culture but so was this deeply spiritual ethic of aspiring to be a righteous man. All boys need father figures, and Mike grew up with just this impossible contradiction of a dad. Jack Bowditch is the biggest, bravest guy in every room he enters — the war hero and woodsman, who’s also a hard-drinking lady’s man — but he’s emotionally unavailable and unwilling to be a role model for his own son. So Mike has to navigate his adolescence alone, trying to learn what qualities in his father he should aspire to, and which ones are toxic.
You are the editor of Down East: The Magazine of Maine, so how much has this aided your own work?
Down East gives me the freedom to travel the state and interview all kinds of interesting people—it opens a lot of doors. On the other hand, the magazine has its own voice and editorial stance which are not necessarily mine. I started writing fiction because I needed a place to record my personal impressions of Maine, which is a troubled place as well as a beautiful one. In my books I can be profane and sexy and a bit of a trickster.
Tell us about your experiences of a degree in English and an MFA in Creative writing and how this has affected your writing.
You can't write well without reading. I studied at Yale when it was the center of the Deconstructionist movement, and so I came to writing crime fiction from a literary background. My American publisher calls what I do "literary suspense," and I often joke that I'm not sure if that gives me too much credit or too little.
Your second book Trespasser received critical acclaim, how how did this make you feel as a newly published writer?
Relief! No writer, filmmaker, or pop star wants to be a one-hit wonder.
What are you currently reading?
Ken Follett's The Eye of the Needle. I enjoyed the film version when I saw it years ago, and the story has stayed with me as an example of a perfectly wrought thriller. I figured it was past time that I read the book itself.
What is your favourite novel?
Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. I read it first in my early twenties, and I was captivated by Hemingway sensibility and style. As a young man, I responded to the Parisian cafes and the bull fights and, of course, the trout streams. But as I've gotten older I've become more interested in the way the “Papa” mystique is at odds with the wounded and vulnerable men in Hemingway's books.
Which authors do you think have had a profound affect on your own work?
In the crime genre, I'd start with Conan Doyle whose stories I read and reread as a child. I've drawn inspiration from so many authors: Raymond Chandler (for his use of language), James Lee Burke and the late Tony Hillerman (for their vivid descriptions of wild places), and Henning Mankell (for his flawed everyman hero). P.D. James is another huge influence, but I defy anyone to see the shadow she casts over my books.
If the book could be made into a movie who would pay your lead role?
Mike Bowditch is a complicated role: He's a troubled, sometimes self-destructive young man, but he is very brave and intelligent. I could see Ryan Gosling or Jake Gyllanhall bringing Mike's contradictions to life.
What is a typical day like in your world?
I try to spend a few quiet hours in my writing studio overlooking the Megunticook River before heading into the chaos of the magazine offices. Journalism is both an exhilarating and exhausting profession—you're always focused on what's happening at the moment. On stressful days I try to squeeze in some fly fishing after work on the stream behind my house.
What is next for you?
I'm doing the copy edits on the fourth Mike Bowditch novel, titled Massacre Pond, which was inspired by real events. A very wealthy woman, who is also an environmental activist, has purchased hundreds of thousands of acres of the Maine woods to turn into a wildlife park, and she's received death threats from people who work in the logging industry. In my book I ask, "What if someone acted on those threats?"
Female First Lucy Walton