Winterkill

"Winterkill" is my third visit with Wyoming game warden, Joe Picket and the best one so far. Set a little while after the events of "Savage Run", it continues the story of Joe and his family trying to live peacefully in a small town in the mountains but constantly bumping up against violent conflict and local politics.

What keeps me coming back to C. J. Box's books is his ability to write sharply focused scenes that build tension. Whether it's Joe Picket dropping unexpectedly into mayhem in the mountains and emerging from a snowstorm carrying a dying man on his back, or his 5th Grade daughter, Sheridan, having a confrontation with threatening adult strangers at her school's gate, C, J. Box lets us see everything clearly. He pays enough show more attention to detail to show me a world I don't know from the point of view of a person I understand while keeping a strong sense of forward motion,

Joe makes a great central character; an honest man surrounded by the violent, the power hungry and the angry. His focus is on his family, his strong, independent wife and his young three daughters, and on trying to do his job fairly.

Joe isn't a superhero. He's a lousy shot and sometimes gets taken completely by surprise by the violence of others. His influencing skills, especially in a public or political setting, are poor. His absence of ambition, his unwillingness to compromise and his tenacity in pursuing the politically sensitive, win him a lot of enemies and he has no real talent for winning allies.

What I liked about this book was that all of Joe's character traits are put to the test by the situation he finds himself in. Doing the right thing for his family means breaking some of his normal rules of behaviour. He discovers within himself a violent rage that frightens him but which he needs to use if he's going to save the people he loves. Somehow a Joe Pickett who is starting to lose himself is even more interesting and engaging than a Joe Pickett who just finds a way to do right.

This is a book filled with violence, death and rage. It looks at what happens when Federal power is in the hands of the wrong people. It shows how hard it is, in States where most of the land is owned by the Government, for communities to have a voice and how easily authority and the voiceless end up in armed conflict.

In this book, Joe finally acquires an ally. Not deliberately of course. Just by doing the right but difficult thing. His ally is sort of a shadow version of Joe. Someone who will do whatever he thinks is necessary to make the bad guys go away. I liked the fact that, while this made Joe more powerful, it also made him much more likely to fall into the pit of his own rage. Joe's ally is part guardian angel and part Faustian devil.

C, J. Box has a flair for describing Wyoming in a way that makes me hungry to be there again. In this book, the snowstorms that rage through the mountains become almost a character in their own right.

C. J. Box is never afraid to have bad things happen to good people, which this time, made parts of this story a harrowing read.

I found the ending of the story not entirely credible. I'm sure that events could happen that way and that the explanation of them would be accepted but I think the impact on Joe and his wife would be greater than I've seen so far.

Still, maybe I have to wait for the next book to see that.

If you're looking for an intelligent, slightly off-centre thriller set in wide open spaces., this is the series you should start with. show less

JOE PICKETT is the best.

I literally could not love this series any more than I do. It isn't possible.

Joe Pickett is a Wyoming game warden. He has a reputation for doing things by the book, which means that sometimes he doesn't fit in with other federal and law enforcement officers in the area. The best thing about Joe is that what you see is what you get, he doesn't have baggage, he loves his family, he loves the job and the land. He is so doggone awesome.

When a line of vehicles, all from different states, with some very interesting folks, drives thru the middle of Saddlestring and then settles high up in the mountains of Twelve Sleep County, the community takes notice. In particular, Joe and his family are on high alert because some of show more these people have the potential to hurt their family and way of life. Joe starts digging into exactly who these people are and what he finds out is astounding. He can't believe a group like this one ended up in his jurisdiction.

Every one of C.J. Box's books takes on big issues while delivering an immensely entertaining story. This time, Joe Pickett has to contend with federal government agencies and officers vs. anti-government groups, resisters, and their sympathizers. I have loved the way Joe has dealt with the big game hunters and extreme environmental groups in the past books, but HOLY BATMAN, I wasn't expecting this story.

Winterkill takes place about a year after the events of Savage Run. Joe and his wife Marybeth are doing well with their three daughters. Sheridan (my favorite Pickett daughter) is now eleven years old and just as fiery and free-spirited as she was in the previous books. As usual, Sheridan features pretty heavily in this book, but one of Joe's other daughters that has a more prominent role in this particular story.

I'm forever in awe of the way CJ Box writes the setting, as if the nature and the landscape are their own major character. In Winterkill, the weather adds more depth to the setting in the form of blustery, super-snowy storm conditions throughout the most of the story. I actually felt like I had low visibility at times during the story, like snow was stinging my own face while I was reading. I felt like I was there. Joe Pickett finds himself in the most intense, crazy situations, but he does it in order to save other people or to bring the bad guys to justice.

I just can barely believe someone can make a story so damn good. Winterkill was completely riveting and thrilling. I felt all sorts of things while the story was taking place, especially for Joe and Marybeth. Joe had to step it up in this story for reasons that I don't want to spoil, and it was interesting to see another side of Joe. More Joe. And I love Nate Romanowski in this story, the loner from up on the mountain, the falconer, the guy that doesn't really trust the government. I hope we see him again in future installments.

These are the very best modern westerns. This series is so awesome. Emotional, intense, thrilling, fast-paced. I didn't want to put the book down (or turn the audiobook off) to sleep at night and couldn't wait until I could pick it up again the next day. There is nothing about this book that I did not like. Not one thing at all.

Audiobook Notes: I'm SOLD on David Chandler's narration of this series, so I'll for sure be buying the audiobooks to go along with each book and I plan to relisten in the future. David Chandler IS Joe Pickett, and I always forget that it isn't Joe himself telling me the story instead of a narrator. Chandler has these great voices that he gives to secondary characters. My favorites are his more gravelly voices. This time Nate Romanowski got the gravelly voice, and I loved it so much because he's this sort of longer guy that lives on the fringes, not afraid to bend the law for justice, and also he is a falconer. Like Stewie the environmentalist from the previous book Savage Run, I'll definitely remember Nate's voice. I love that.

Title: Winterkill by C.J. Box
Series: Joe Pickett #3
Narrated by: David Chandler
Publisher: Recorded Books
Length: 11 hours, 25 minutes, Unabridged show less

This is the third Joe Pickett mystery from C.J. Box and it has several subplots.

Wyoming game warden and devoted family man, Joe Pickett, finds the local U.S. Forest Service manager drunk, shooting into a herd of elk, and then trying to reload his gun with cigarettes.. Joe arrests him, but the man escapes and by the time Joe catches up with him, he's been murdered. A team is sent from Washington DC to head up the search for the killer.

A storm sets in and ruins their plans. By the time things are clear enough for them to go back to the murder site, Melinda Strickland, a high ranking Forest Service official and two vicious FBI agents, have made Joe's life a living hell. Strickland is the kind of sociopathic bureaucrat that makes everyone show more hate the government.

Back at home, the Pickett’s have been in the process of adopting April, the little girl abandoned by her mother in a prior book. She's finally starting to feel secure with Joe and Marybeth when her mother returns, along with a group of anti-government Sovereign Citizens, demanding her daughter back.

We are also introduced to Nate Romanowski, a mysterious man with a proclivity for bows and arrows, large-calibre handguns, and falconry. Where does he fit into the mix? Is he a killer or an ally?

I've recently become addicted to this series. The author excels at creating suspense as well as memorable characters. I love the atmospheric Wyoming setting. Winterkill is an intense and very emotional story. I can't wait to read the next one. show less

What do you do when you see things hurdling toward disaster, but the only way to stop it would mean crossing an ethical line? What if it's your family at risk and everything about law, order, and the justice system is suddenly put to the test...and begins to fail? What do you do when the good guys become the bad guys?

Joe Pickett is confronted with all of these questions in C.J. Box's third installment of the series. Joe struggles with his emotions as he tries to work within a system that is breaking down. Joe is very "human" in his strengths and weaknesses. I felt his frustration and physical fatigue as he raced against the clock, desperately trying to do things "by the book" and save the day.

There are quite a few stand out characters show more here. Nate has really captured my attention. He's a mysterious guy with a razor sharp mentality, and dangerous. I don't think he's left those dangerous ways in the past, but I do hope we will see more of him. Melinda Strickland was one of the most manipulative and narcissistic characters I've read to date. She's second (IMHO) only to Maggie Osborne's Philadelphia in Silver Lining. We can tell something isn't quite right with Strickland from the beginning. It kept me guessing about her "true" motives. Wade Brockius also made me curious. He's definitely an anti-government fanatic, but I could also see a man who respects life and family.

I think this is a very powerful story. Box is a master of the slow build, setting the stage for a stunning climax that left me staring at the ceiling (in a WOW kinda way). This book really made me think. Yes, it made me cry in several places, but I like a good ugly cry now and then. It's the mark of a talented author when he or she can make you forget these are fictional characters. Nicely done! show less

A wild ride. It's nice that Box showcased how unhinged our alphabet agencies can be when unleashed upon citizens. It's good to see an author who includes Ruby Ridge and Waco as complicated subjects that questions the objectives of law enforcement in such matters.

The portrayal of Joe took steps that I wasn't prepared for. It was unexpected character development that I'd normally see as odd, but I'll let it go for now.

In the Joe Pickett series CJ Box manages to tackle environmentalists, endangered species issues, psychopathic killers and in Winter Kill he manages to weave a believable and fast paced story that includes a sociopathic bureaucrat. Box does a nice job of representing the issues that separate the west from the bureaucrats in Washington without making the issues or the bureaucrats look canned and simplistic. The end has an interesting twist that shows Joe Pickett's character to be a bit more complex than one might expect from his first two books. A very enjoyable book.

A national forest service bureaucrat is brutally murdered just as a caravan of anti-government “sovereigns” arrive to set up camp in the Battle Mountain campground. This would not be Game Warden Joe Pickett’s concern except that the man who was killed was in his custody at the time, and the Sovereigns are sheltering the mother of Joe’s foster child, Lucy.

Book # 3 in the Joe Pickett series has two distinct plot lines – maybe three. Who is targeting the federal officers? How far with the clearly “not right in the head” FBI agent and NFS district manager go to prove their assertions and further their own careers without regard to health or safety of anyone else? And how can Joe and his wife Mary Beth fight the legal battle show more to adopt Lucy, when her biological mother gets a court order requiring them to return the child to the mother who abandoned her?

Joe Pickett is the quintessential “good guy.” I like his relationship with his wife and children. He is deliberate in his actions, almost always thinking through various possibilities and consequences before acting. However, he is also frequently unsure of his position, and has a tendency to beat himself up for either not acting more decisively or for losing his temper. This makes him vulnerable and likeable, but I’m getting a little tired of his inner struggles.

The main difficulty I had with this particular book, however, is that the plot got overly complicated. I don’t think the multiple story lines worked as well as they should have for this genre. The murder happened quickly, but then we got sidetracked with the egomaniacal district manager and FBI agent, and Lucy’s mother just further complicated the storyline while distracting from the original murder. Still, Box writes a fast-paced thriller and has a gift for making the landscape (and weather) as important a character as Joe. show less