Endangered

When we last saw the Pickett family, April had just ran away with a local cowboy with a checkered past, Nate was in federal custody after the Wolfgang Templeton debacle and Missy had absconded with the very unfortunate but yet not realizing it Mr. Templeton.

Now, a few months later, April reappears in the worst possible way - beaten almost to death and thrown into a ditch, surviving the night almost by a miracle. In the meantime, Nate strikes a deal with the government to serve as bait for his old co-worker (of a type) and is released under very strict conditions. Missy is still MIA to almost everyone's relief.

And these two events become the center of the novel - Joe is trying to find who assaulted and almost killed his daughter, show more Marybeth spends most of the book in the hospital, looking over April and Nate and his girlfriend end up having their own problems. 15 novels into the series, a reader knows that the two story lines will need to connect somewhere. And they eventually connect but it felt as a setup for the next novel than a part of this one - not having the Nate subplot would not have changed much of the main story (except at the very end - and that could have been handled differently).

C. J. Box has a tendency to leave some of his supporting characters almost cartoonishly cardboardy. Sometimes they appear in later novels, get more definition and a few installments later, they actually feel like real people. Throwaway characters which never reappear can occasionally feel more like a type than a person. It rarely bothers me because it does not really harm the action (yes, they would be better if they are well developed but...). But even for him, some of the characters here were not even full concepts, let alone characters.

The Cates family, the main antagonists of novel, are almost the antithesis of the Pickett family - a doting Mom (in a very different way), a Dad, 3 children (3 girls for Pickett, 3 boys for Cates), the middle child being the bad apple. As the novel progresses, you get a lot more of these parallels all the way to the final moments when mother's love and trust become the key to explaining what really happened and why. And while some of the Cateses have something of a personality, it is mostly seen as the anti-personality compared to the other family. Don't get me wrong - Brenda Cates can give you nightmares but the rest of the family? They are just types, they are there to serve as plot points. And then there is Dudley who is even more cartoonish than the usual way bureaucrats are depicted in the series.

Add a few side plots (including one connected to Joe's actual job of course), yet another truck being totaled by Joe (I will be curious to see what they will give him to drive this time), some breathtaking scenery and a few people getting shot and you have the novel.

With all this being said, the novel actually managed to surprise me at its end. Through most of the novel you are absolutely sure you know what happened to April but it is not until the very end when we finally get the confirmation - and it was not exactly what I expected it to be. Or anyone else in the novel. The whole construction of the novel shows how easy it is to let preconceptions and believes guide your understanding of events. Saying that is not even a spoiler because there are so many layers of lies and beliefs in the novel that by the time you get to the end, it feels like you really cannot trust anything you think you know. And despite everything that was not really working in the novel, that makes it worth reading, especially if you had been keeping up with the series.

A decent installment into the series and I will probably pick up the next one soon - as with most of the later novels, the end of this one sets the stage for the next one (although technically here the whole Nate subplot sets the stage for the next one from what I can see in the next book's description).

One thing that is starting to be a bit annoying with the series: I wish that the author will stop throwing stuff at April's head and getting her into trouble. While most of it makes sense considering her character and past, it starts to feel a bit like a case of "The girls that were born and raised in the family are the good ones and can never do anything really bad or stupid because Marybeth is such a wonderful mother but we need some family drama so let's mess up with April again". Hopefully we are done with all that. show less

Life can be fleeting in the mountains of Wyoming and Game Warden Joe Pickett knows that all too well. Humans also have an amazing ability to be incredibly cruel. The most recent example is scattered on the ground around him on an otherwise beautiful mid-March day. Everywhere he looks he sees feathers, blood, shells, and the bodies of at least 21 dead sage grouse. Nearby a few wounded survivors who will not last much longer move around. Known to many as “Prairie Chickens” these helpless birds were wiped out sometime very recently as they went about their springtime rituals.

While Joe Pickett is plenty angry about this senseless slaughter he is about to get much angrier when his friend and Sheriff of Twelve Sleep County, Mike Reed, show more calls him. One of his deputies has found a young woman in a ditch by the side of an isolated road. The woman has been severely beaten and is barely alive. She also might be Joe’s daughter, April, who left home to travel the rodeo circuit with a local professional rodeo cowboy by the name of Dallas Cates. Dallas was trouble and Joe knew it, but he couldn’t prevent his 18 year old daughter from running off with the dashing cowboy.

It soon becomes very clear that the badly beaten woman in the ditch is April. She has endured serious blunt force trauma and is barely alive. Even if she lives, which is in grave doubt, most likely she has suffered irreversible brain damage. As April fights for life, Joe Pickett works to figure out what happened to his daughter and deal with whomever is responsible.

As one expect in the series, a significant portion of the book deals with a secondary storyline involving the ongoing situation with Nate Romanowski. Repercussions from events detailed in Stone Cold continue here and provide a significant backdrop to the main storyline.

Endangered: A Joe Pickett Novel is the fifteenth book in the Joe Pickett series by author C. J. Box and a mighty good one. Family and the complex relationship between humans and nature have always been a major element in these books and such is the case here. The same is true in the short story collection Shots Fired. At the same time those issues never get in the way of the complex mystery or mysteries contained in each book. If you are new to the series start at the beginning with Open Season and work your way forward as family history is a major part of this great series.

Endangered: A Joe Pickett Novel
C. J. Box
http://www.cjbox.net
G. P. Putnam’s Sons (Penguin Group)
http://www.penguin.com
March 2015
ISBN# 978-0-399-16077-6
Hardback (also available in e-book and audio)
384 Pages
$26.95

Material was obtained for my use in an objective review from the good folks of the Plano Library System and specifically the Haggard Branch.

Kevin R. Tipple © 2015 show less

I have to admit that I read Endangered as a sort of experiment. You see, I haven't read past book five in C.J. Box's Joe Pickett series, and book five was a long time ago. Even though I enjoyed those five books, I had to ask myself if I was ever going to get the chance to catch up. Since I didn't believe I could, short of shoving everything else to the side and reading the series straight through, I decided to jump in here at book fifteen. A lot of things have happened to Joe and his family in those ten books I didn't read, but Box gave me enough information to fill in the blanks so I didn't feel hopelessly lost. In fact, I almost felt as if I'd never left-- and that's got a lot to do with the author's creation of such a strong show more character.

There are three storylines on the move in Endangered. There's what happened to all those sage grouse for starters. Most people probably don't think of the ramifications of placing animals on the endangered species list, but Box makes it quite clear what could happen if those birds are, and he weaves the information into the narrative seamlessly. This storyline also adds a lot of tension and stress to Joe's life at a time when he certainly doesn't need it. The "sage grouse twins" Annie Hatch of the Bureau of Land Management and Revis Wentworth of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service seem to go out of their way to push Joe over the edge.

The second storyline involves Nate Romanowski, who just might be released from federal custody as along as he agrees to jump through all the hoops that FBI agent Dudley has set up for him. Dudley ranks right up there with the sage grouse twins in being adept at making people lose their tempers. This storyline is a quiet one, but longtime readers know Nate will make his presence known.

The third storyline is the most important: the identity of the person responsible for what happened to April Pickett. It has Joe treading the fine line between being a father and being a law enforcement officer. Box has created one of the best dysfunctional families in fiction with the Cates. From the quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Eminem at the very beginning of the book to warnings given to Joe by the sheriff, readers know from the start that Brenda Cates is the Ma Barker of Wyoming. She is the one person in that violent family that Joe has to be most careful of. Knowing that, does it mean that there are no surprises in this storyline? Don't believe that for a second!

I'm so glad I decided to head back to Wyoming to visit a spell with Joe Pickett. I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed Box's intricately woven plots, fast pacing, and well-drawn characters. As the chapters flew by, I became convinced of one thing: no way am I going to let another ten books go by before I read another one. Joe Pickett's simply too good to neglect. Shame on me! show less

Box is heavily preserved bread his stories never go stale. He is such a literary comfort.
Take a little Joe Pickett, Wyoming game warden. Throw in his wife, his 3 daughters, his dog, Daisy, and his best friend Nate Romanowski - master falconer. Now bring on the Cateses, the nastiest little family since Ma Barker, and you have a gripping mystery that won't let go. In a previous Joe Pickett story, Joe's adopted daughter, April, runs off with world class bull rider Dallas Cates.

Now she's back: found beaten, bloody, and unconscious in a ditch outside Saddlestring, Wy. Joe is certain the person who did this to her is Dallas Cates. But an anonymous tip and all the evidence points to Tilden Cudmore, a survivalist and conspiracy theorist. Still, show more Joe thinks Dallas has something to do with it. The Cateses, an old hunter and outfitter, his three nasty sons, and the ruler of them all, Brenda - wife and mother and brains of the operation, are as vicious a bunch of backwoods rattlers you can find.

Now April is in a coma in a hospital in Billings, Nate Romanowski has been ambushed and lies near death in the same hospital, and Joe is determined to find out who did it. I almost never say this, but I couldn't put it down. show less

I finished The Devil in Pew Number Seven by Rebecca Nichols Alonzo just before I started reading this spell binder by C.J. Box. If I hadn't just finished this true story, I may have been hard pressed to find the Cates family believable because they are quite awful! Otherwise, I thoroughly enjoyed this well paced mystery. Characters are well developed, the multiple plots tie together well and you'll have a hard time putting it down.

C.J. Box was a featured author at a Texas Library Association dinner therefore we met him, heard him speak and got an autographed copy of this book. Although this title is part of the Joe Picket Series, it can totally stand on its own. I especially love books of this type of series. It is often hard to get show more books in the order they were written, and the author can use up a lot of time to give you enough information for you to understand what is happening. I definitely will read other books by Box.

FROM AMAZON: She was gone. Joe Pickett had good reason to dislike Dallas Cates, even if he was a rodeo champion, and now he has even more: Joe's 18-year-old ward, April, has run off with him. And then comes even worse news: The body of a girl has been found in a ditch along the highway - alive but just barely, the victim of blunt-force trauma.

It is April, and the doctors aren't sure if she'll recover. Cates denies having anything to do with it - says she ran away from him, too - and there's evidence that points to another man. But Joe knows in his gut who's responsible. What he doesn't know is the kind of danger he's about to encounter.

Cates is bad enough, but Cates' family is like none Joe has ever met before. Joe's going to find out the truth even if it kills him. But this time it just might. show less

I don't know what formula C.J. Box uses to keep cranking out these wonderful novels, but he has latched onto something that works. This one revolves around the story of Joe Pickett's adopted daughter April, who is found along the edge of a road nearly beaten to death. While Mary Beth camps at April's hospital bedside waiting to see if she will come out of her medically-induced coma, Joe sets off to find a killer. Good stuff!

Someone gave me the book that preceded this one and because of the way that one ended I wanted to read this one, as the story was left hanging. This seems to be a good series the author tells a story well and the characters are well developed, but like James Lee Burke's Robichaux series, the main character seems to be getting a little old to be acting the way he does. Otherwise the adventure is a fun book to read.