Trophy Hunt

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 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 show more 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 don't read a detective book series for brilliant insights into our relationship with the larger cosmos. Joe Pickett would not have much patience with that, and the books are better for it.

Also, a cow is one thing, but you don't fuck with a man's dog. Or a woman's dog, Harvey. Just don't do it.

Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett comes upon a dead moose that's been horribly mutilated. Meanwhile cattle have been found dead with the same mutilations. When the killing spreads to humans, everyone gets involved in the case: the sheriff, the FBI, the county attorney, and Joe too. Speculation is rife in the community. People blame government experiments, cults, and aliens by turns.

I will be the first to admit that I am not a big fan of C.J. Box. I just don;t care for the theme of the stories. But... that having been said it is an excellent read if you like tales of the outdoors and the conflict between man and nature.

This one almost took the place of Free Fire as my my favorite Joe Pickett mystery. I liked how it slipped in a little supernatural edginess without losing its overall Western crime fiction vibe.

Someone is mutilating and killing animals in game-warden Joe Pickett's Wyoming territory. Then two men are also found dead and cut upon. Although I love this series and its characters, the plot of this one was just too bizarre and unbelievable for me. Plus there was a supernatural element that neither Joe Pickett or I appreciated.

Joe Pickett is a US Game Warden in Twelve Sleep County, Wyoming, where he lives with his wife and two daughters. He doesn't get paid very much and lives paycheck to paycheck. He's deeply in love with his family and always tries to do the right thing.

Joe is teaching his daughters to fish on a day off when they come across a dead moose. A dead animal is nothing new to him or his girls by the nature of their lives, but the moose has been surgically butchered and parts of it are missing. Joe has no explanation for what happened to the moose, but he hopes that will be the end of it. A few days later a small herd of cattle is found dead and mutilated. The sheriff attributes the attacks and mutilations to a grizzly bear, but game warden Joe show more Pickett knows that the cuts on the cattle were made with a smooth blade, just like those on the moose. The killer is definitely not a grizzly bear.

Each time something happens, Joe feels an energy in the air that there's something of the supernatural in the Wyoming forests and mountains. Some aspects of the investigation are left unexplained, and the reader is unsure as to whether there may be a down-to-earth explanation or whether "woo woo" forces are operating.

Trophy Hunt is a highly readable novel about a real family and their various tribulations of daily life, as well as being an involving, knowledgeable account of the natural environment and its preservation. Box isn't afraid to take chances and kill off or hurt central characters in these books and this makes you continually wonder if Joe Picket and his family will survive to the end of each novel.

I love the characters and the the fact that it's set against the beautiful, unforgiving landscape of Wyoming. I definitely plan to read more of the series. show less

Game warden Joe Pickett discovers the mutilated body of a moose while out fishing with his daughters. Then several mutilated cattle are discovered on a local ranch. The next mutilated bodies to turn up are human. Joe finds himself on a task force comprised of local law enforcement, FBI, and prosecutors, as they join forces to investigate these seemingly related crimes.

The book has some aspects of a detective novel, a police procedural, and even a cozy, but it definitely tilts toward the thriller end of the crime spectrum. The suspense wasn't enough to make me jumpy, but it was enough to make the book hard to put down. I liked the overlap between Joe's personal and professional life. His wife and daughters had significant roles in the show more book, and I liked the family dynamics.

I haven't read the first three books in the series. While this book works fine as a stand-alone, there are frequent references to events from the earlier books in the series. Some of these references may be spoilers for the earlier books.

This was a 4-star read most of the way through, but it fizzled out at the end. The threads of the story seemed to get tangled up, and Box didn't quite manage to smooth out the knots. show less