PORTLAND, Maine — Gerry Boyle has been writing about Maine for nearly 50 years, first as a reporter for the “Rumford Falls Times” weekly newspaper, then as a reporter and columnist for the “Morning Sentinel” in Waterville.
His career then took a slight turn when he became the editor of Colby College’s alumni magazine. He’s a Colby graduate himself, and it's a job he retired from a couple of years ago.
Now comes another milestone.
Boyle has just published “Hard Line,” his 14th and final crime novel featuring Jack McMorrow, a newspaper reporter who finds more than his share of trouble in the dark corners of Maine that don’t show up in tourist brochures.
The first McMorrow book came out in 1993, and Boyle remembers what was running through his head as he started writing it.
“The stuff that I was seeing in newspapers was so much fodder for this kind of novel and the genre. I thought, you know, I could do this," he said.
After finishing that first novel, he sent it to three agents and three major publishers. Each one rejected it, albeit politely and with some nice things to say.
“They all had advice as to what I should do to make it better. But all six opinions were very different,” Boyle recalled. “So, I decided I would change nothing. I sent it to a smaller press here in Maine called North Country Press and, lo and behold, they published it. And then it got great reviews all over the country and elsewhere, and that was Jack McMorrow off and running.”
“Hard Line” marks the final chapter for McMorrow, in part because Boyle didn’t want the books to become stale or formulaic.
“The series is going to end. It has to,” he said.
But he keenly wanted the final installment to represent his best effort: “I didn’t want to limp over the finish line.”