Mike Bowditch and his biologist girlfriend Stacey were out in the woods doing game warden things — specifically, seeking and destroying feral hogs invading from New Hampshire — when they stumbled upon a shallow grave for a baby wrapped in a t-shirt. After recovering from the horror of finding infant remains scavenged by pigs, Mike calls for support from the state troopers — and who should arrive but Dani Tate, the former warden-turned-trooper who one time had a serious crush on Mike and it got really awkward. Still, being creatures of duty, Mike and Dani’s investigation gets cracking without incident and leads to an existing missing persons case. The baby can only have been the child of a woman presumed dead for four years now. When Mike revisits the case files to look at the woman, he’s staggered to realize he’s seen this woman recently. The result is an exciting and dangerous investigation that takes Mike deep into the woods and deeper into danger, made all the more serious by the fact that his girlfriend is going through career and personal drama. Doiron handles these multiple aspects of the story very well, and I enjoyed seeing Mike as a more mature officer here — still a bit impulsive, but less prone to making mistakes and riding roughshod over people. The complexity of his relationship with Stacey’s father — a retired warden and his mentor — adds to the interest, and the twist was truly unexpected. This is a series I plan on continuing once I’ve balanced the fiction/nonfiction scales a bit.