C. J. Box

The truth is out there but the doggedly pragmatic Joe Pickett is struggling to find it.

I returned for my fourth visit with Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett to find that he's has gone all Mulder and Scully on me. Within the first few pages mutilated animals possibly dropped from the sky. From there, things got weirder and bloodier, with people being added to the casualties.

Still, I was visiting with Joe Pickett so at least I knew I'll have an explanation by the end of the book that doesn't show more include alien probes in uncomfortable places.

C. J. Box's novels are a comfort read for me. I love his ability to take me to the wilds of Wyoming and feel like I'm there and seeing it through the eyes of someone who loves and understands it. I also like meeting up again with the ensemble cast of good guys, not-so-good guys, weird guys and strong women, centred around Joe, his wife and his two young daughters. As the books progress there people and the relationships between them have grown in believable non-soap-opera ways.

"Trophy Hunt" has a rich mix of land-grabbing realtors, energy companies competing for mineral rights, cattle mutilations, crop circles and uninvited UFO experts. Joe is reluctantly in the middle of everything by virtue of having found the first mutilation, knowing many of the players, distrusting the sheriff and being nominated by his boss to take part in a Task Force.

The Task Force opens part two of this slightly-darker-than-usual mystery with this speech:
“GENTLEMEN,” COUNTY ATTORNEY Robey Hersig said, “let’s convene the first-ever strategy meeting of the newly formed Northern Wyoming Murder and Mutilations Task Force.”
Sheriff Barnum said, “Jesus, I hate that name.”
This manages to get across the pomposity of big-boys playing you're-in-MY-gang-now, the gallows humour needed to survive dealing daily with the atrocious and how people who've been there too many times before react in reality.

I liked the tension in this book and the development of Joe's wife as a key actor in the story. The plot was complicated without becoming labyrinthine. The violence was graphic but mostly off-stage and the whole thing was dappled with humour and great scenery.

Joe is the rock around which this river of chaos flows. Sometimes I felt like I wanted him to be a little less static but then I recognised he'd stop being Joe. I love his dogged pragmatism. Watching him examine and discredit an alleged crop circle was a delight.

My only dissatisfaction was that the resolution was a little too dependent on crazy people doing crazy things and with even Joe Pickett being not so much open-minded as having had his mind wedged ajar by the unexplained. show less

I'm a fan of the Joe Pickett series but I found myself struggling with this one.

Some of it was the change in setting. Joe is pulled away from his sleepy part of Wyoming to the millionaire playground that is Jackson Hole. I've been there a couple of times and although the Grand Tetons and Lake Janet are truly spectacular, I didn't like the atmosphere in the town, which seemed like a theme park for the entitled. Joe doesn't like Jackson much either but I still missed being in Saddlestring.

Then show more there was Joe himself. I usually see Joe as part of his family. This time he's alone and partially estranged from his wife and when I took a good look at him, I saw someone I didn't much like. Apart from a stubborn refusal to let go of a problem even when it brings him into conflict with authority, I barely recognized Joe.

Then there's the shadow of adultery. You'd think that in a book filled with killings, a little adultery wouldn't take centre stage but it does, mainly because Joe is corrosively dishonest about what he wants.

As the book went on, I found there were some plot-based explanations for his aberrant behaviour but not enough to stop me seeing Joe very differently. What I disliked most was the shabby coyness of the will-they-won’t-they-commit-adultery theme. I almost abandoned the book at this point.

There were some good scenes: Nate in the Stockman's Bar, Joe out at the State Cabin confronting an outfitter, but they were the exception.

The plot was more elaborate than in the previous books. It was clever and original. It seemed to me the book lagged a little in the middle but the ending was crisp and tied things up nicely.

I'm hoping the next book takes me back to people and places that I like better than the ones I met in "Out Of Range". show less

Taking place during Montana's "Summer of Fire," C.J. Box's The Bitterroots is a story that has the sudden, ferocious power of a sledgehammer. When Cassie Dewell tells someone where she's going, she's told "You have no idea what kind of... snake pit you're going to fall into," and that's the honest truth. The smoke of countless forest fires may obscure the Kleinsassers' sinister grip on the county in which they reside, but the acrid stench of the smoke gives them away. Even the name of their show more property-- the Iron Cross Ranch-- has an ominous ring to it.

Cassie Dewell faces one challenge of escalating intensity after another, but, folks, she's put down her Denise Mina novel, and she's determined to get to the bottom of things simply because the other side is overplaying their hand. These challenges are humiliating, shocking, infuriating... and I would have done exactly what she did. (Some folks don't react well to intimidation.) The only qualm I had was that, for the single mother of a teenage boy, Cassie went much farther out on a limb than she should have.

The Kleinsassers are a family of vipers, and I wanted to see Cassie bring them down. One person remarks, "We seem to be witnessing the Olympics of family dysfunction right here in Montana." Some of the Kleinsasser revelations didn't surprise me one bit, and I cheered Cassie on to the very last page.

As always, the setting has an important role in Box's novels. Readers will experience the Summer of Fire in the steep mountains and deep valleys of northwestern Montana close to the Idaho border, but they will also learn a bit of history. This is the land of the Big Hole Battlefield, where Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce fought for their freedom, and Box's story does justice to the landscape and history of the area.

Now begins the wait for Cassie Dewell's next investigation. show less

This was a solid and straightforward police procedural, although it felt like a comedown after the intricate convolutions of "Back of Beyond" and the teeth-gritting shock and tension of "The Highway." To me, it seems like a bridge story, a way to give Investigator Cassie Dewell an adventure while author C.J. Box plots her climactic battle with the Lizard King. It probably didn't help that I don't usually enjoy stories with kids for protagonists. Authors who aren't Stephen King seem to show more struggle with writing children.

That said, my feelings are mostly a reaction to the strength of the books that came before. On its own merits, this is a fine story set amidst the oil boom of North Dakota's Bakken territory. Big money brings big violence to rural North Dakota, and the culture clash feels right. As a Montana native, I appreciated the little flavors of home, from the recognition that our eastern neighbor is the butt of all our jokes, to local deputies responding to the report of a severed body part behind a Taco John's. You can tell Box writes from his own residence in this part of the country, and this ex-pat Montanan appreciates the authenticity. show less