"The other, other Maine"

Caspar David Friedrich, The Tree of Crows (1822)

I’ve been spending some time lately with Gerry Boyle’s Jack McMorrow mysteries—fourteen books in total, published over three decades—and I find myself thinking about the magic of what Boyle created. Jack McMorrow is a scrappy, lovable protagonist who, despite being from away, is immediately found trustworthy when he chooses to trade big-city newsrooms for backwoods justice. Yes, these adventures are un-put-downable and delightful, tense, and sometimes heartbreaking, but the real legacy of this series is in its lasting portrait of rural Maine at the edges of law, violence, and conscience.

If you’re unfamiliar, Jack McMorrow is a former New York Times reporter who follows a lead north and ends up reporting—and constantly stumbling into danger—from a string of small towns across Maine. The first book, Deadline, was first published in 1993. The final installment, Hard Line, came out last June, and brings a sense of closure not just to McMorrow’s story, but to the long arc of moral, personal, and political stakes that Boyle’s work has quietly explored all these years. “I don’t want to retire like Tom Brady,” he told Abigail Curtis for Colby News, laughing. “I’d like to finish with the best book.”

The books have received wide acclaim—Random Act won the 2020 Maine Literary Award for Crime Fiction—and they’ve earned a devoted readership. But what is most interesting to me, as someone who works to sniff out underrepresented Maine stories, is that Boyle expertly uses this genre to depict a Maine that often escapes the postcard. His characters are not romanticized, but deeply observed. His towns are full of people trying to do right by their families in a place that’s not always gentle with them. In that way, there’s something profound about these books that entices fans of literary fiction as well as crime and mystery—despite the grisly murders, the biker gangs, and the masked robbers, of course.

Boyle once described his work as chronicling “the other, other Maine,” and I think that’s exactly right. If you haven’t yet met Jack McMorrow, or need a reason to pull your dog-eared copy of Deadline off the shelf and start over again, you’re in for something gritty, clear-eyed, and, in its own way, deeply rooted in the real, real Maine. But don't just take my word for it ...

PRAISE FOR JACK MCMORROW

"There isn't a single working mystery writer in the state (of Maine) who doesn't owe Gerry a debt of gratitude for blazing a path for us to follow." Paul Doiron, Author of the Mike Bowditch series

"For fourteen books, Jack McMorrow—fictional though he may be—has been the iconic Maine hero, stalwart and moral, a character who will live forever. Gerry Boyle has created a hero for the ages." Tess Gerritson, NYT Bestselling author of Rizzoli & Isles

"The series serves as a time capsule for Maine in the way that Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch novels have had for Los Angeles. Fiction, yes, but always anchored in the reality of time and place."  Michael Koryta, NYT bestselling author

"In the Jack McMorrow books, Gerry Boyle has done something unique and valuable for Maine: observe, recognize, and illuminate parts of our state away from the cities and the coastal glitz. These novels will endure as a record of people and places that get short shrift in literature and elsewhere. And they are damn fine stories." Richard Cass, author of the Elder Darrow mystery series, and Hard as a Headstone (forthcoming from Islandport in 2026)

"I own every one of his books and have read them multiple times. His body of work is a master class in writing crime fiction consistently and well." Brenda Buchanan, author of the Joe Gale mystery series

K.L.L.