Dead by Dawn is the twelfth (!) book in a thriller series featuring Maine game warden Mike Bowditch, but the first I have read. The story has two parts to it, told in alternating chapters. First, there's a traditional mystery about who committed a murder; second, there's a survival story after Mike is ambushed, crashes his Jeep into the Androscoggin River, and has to elude pursuers. The second story is more compelling than the first; there's more action, it's different from most detective novels, and it offers loads of Maine local color.
This genre of book follows a fairly rigid formula, so that reading one is like watching an episode of, say, CSI or Law & Order. Episodes differ in their quality for sure, but you can't help but watch/read it through the lens of genre conventions; for example, those conventions strongly influence who you think the murderer is and how you interpret a character's eccentric behavior.
In my opinion, the quality of this type of book is determined largely by how many of the annoying clichés it avoids. Is the detective haunted by a previous case? Do characters pause in the middle of a chase to have a heartfelt conversation? Dead by Dawn avoids most of them, until the final needlessly complex showdown where the perpetrators explain their motives rather than just killing the detective.
I read Dead by Dawn while the news is filled with stories about generative AI. I'm sure the current version of an AI chatbot could write a pretty solid detective thriller.
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