BOOK REVIEW: Out of Range (Joe Pickett, #5) by C.J. Box

Out of Range is the fifth book in the police procedural crime fiction series by C.J. Box starring U.S. Fish and Game warden Joe Pickett. Set in the very rural setting of Saddlestring, Wyoming and starring a straight white male protagonist, these are an unusual set of books to be ensconced so firmly in my list of books I heartily enjoy reading. Just like the scenery of the Big Sky country they often describe, the Joe Pickett books are austere, airy and admirable.

In Out of Range, Joe is dealing with some changes in his life as a result of the after-effects of events from the previous book, Trophy Hunt. Some of this change is good, like one of his least favorite people (Bud Burnham) no longer being sheriff of Twelve Sleep County. And some of it is more nuanced, like the fact that his wife and eldest daughter Sheridan are entering the oil-and-water phase of their mother-daughter relationship.

Out of Range begins with the discovery of the dead body of a longtime friend of Joe’s named Will Jensen who was serving as the Game Warden for Jackson (which is described as the “California” of Wyoming) when he apparently shot himself in the face. His boss asks Joe to temporarily take over the territory Jensen had patrolled and he (somewhat reluctantly) agrees to do so. Jackson is a huge step up from Saddlestring because it includes the Grand Teton National Park and if  Joe does a good job it’s possible he could get this area as a permanent assignment, which would mean more prestige for him and a more cosmopolitan life for his family. But because the opportunity is a result of a sudden death it means that Joe has to go to Jackson alone and leave his wife Mary Beth and his daughters behind. Before he leaves, Joe asks his friend (and mysterious loner) Nate Romanowski to look in on his wife and kids while he’s gone and keep them safe.

When Joe gets to Jackson (2 days late because he had to take care of a wayward bear who was getting too familiar with human food) he discovers that maybe he didn’t know Will as well as he thought he had. Will had spent multiple nights in the Sheriff's drunk tank and had even been arrested for violent, disruptive behavior; his wife and kids had moved out several months before his body was found.

One of the interesting features of the Joe Pickett books are the various contemporary issues facing wilderness areas that the author seamlessly weaves into the stories. This time one issue depicted is the popularity of “fad diets,” such as the idea of raising and caring for your animals before  (chicken, cows and pigs) before you slaughter and eat them. And the perils of being in a state essentially controlled by one political party. And the power and corruption of people behind large real estate developments. In this book, these three aspects are rolled into one "big bad."

A new twist in Out of Range is Joe’s surprising besottedness with a mysterious woman who seems to know more about his friend’s death than she’s willing to talk about. (And who happens to be the wife of one of the big wigs that Will was having trouble with.) Simultaneously Joe and Mary Beth begin to have trouble connecting (literally and figuratively) and each blames the other (and especially the other’s absence) for the unhappy/problematic situation they are in.  And there’s an ominous subplot involving some weird threatening phone calls someone is leaving on Joe’s home office answering machine.

Joe has a cellphone but by the very nature of his work he is often "out of range" of communication  and he doesn't really seem to appreciate how annoying/worrying/problematic it can be for people trying to reach him to not be able to do so. Another interesting feature of the books is how self unaware Joe is about the feelings of others and his own feelings. He also doesn't react well to authority and often gets in trouble for doing things that his superiors would prefer he didn't do. He has his own very strong belief in right and wrong is rarely convinced to change his course of actions once he has decided what to do.

In the end, Joe (of course) does figure out what happened to his friend and has a fair number of adventures as he unearths the tensions and secrets that Will was dealing with before his untimely death. And some exciting and important developments occur back at Saddlestring that will be interesting to see how this changes Joe’s view of the way he does his job in the future. And Nate disappears. Again. Hopefully the ramifications of these events will be addressed in Book 6, In Plain Sight.

Title: Out of Range.
Author: C.J. Box.
Format: Kindle.
Length: 320 pages.
Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons.
Date Published: May10, 2006.
Date Read: September 13, 2021.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★★★  (5.0/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: A- (3.67/4.0).

PLOT: B+.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: A-.
WRITING: A.

BOOK REVIEW: Trophy Hunt (Joe Pickett, #4) by C.J. Box

Trophy Hunt is the fourth book in the long-running, best-selling mystery series written by C.J. Box starring Joe Pickett, Wyoming Fish & Game warden and his family. These books are both similar and different from the typical books I  read in the murder-mystery, police-procedural, suspense-thriller genres. Yes, there’s usually a dead body to start the action (although in this one the first body is not human, it’s a dead moose that has been bizarrely mutilated) and the reader definitely gets a first-hand view of what Joe does to try and solve the crimes he comes across. But Joe is not a police officer, so the camaraderie with a team of detectives is missing, and the familiar details of police procedure such as forensics, canvassing the neighborhood, and trawling for leads by phone and Internet is not nearly a large feature of the Pickett books.

Instead, in Trophy Hunt (like in the earlier books) we have Joe on his own, trying to solve crimes, but this time as part of an inter-agency task force he’s been grudgingly added to (there have been multiple animal mutilations in addition to dead bodies found), while he’s being looked down upon for not being “real” law enforcement. However, instead of detective colleagues as secondary characters, Joe has his family (wife Marybeth, pre-teen daughters Sheridan and Lucy and trusted canine companion Maxine), friends (Nate Romanowski, a former Special Forces vet who now spends most of his time communing with nature, especially his falcons) and neighbors/associates who live and work in Twelve Sleep County (his nemesis, Sheriff Nate Burman; assorted other law enforcement contacts; and various colorful characters who populate the town). I have said before that a genre book centered on a main character basically succeeds on the quality and characterization of the secondary characters and in this respect the Pickett series shines. The landscape of Wyoming is an unusual but evocative setting for the mystery series and Box uses it often for maximum effect.

In Trophy Hunt, the mystery revolves around money, real estate and family. Amazingly, the area around Twelve Sleep is beginning to boom due to the presence of rich pockets of natural gas. This is resulting in a real estate boom and potential huge profits. Of course where there’s money to be made there’s criminals ready to do whatever it takes to get it. It takes awhile for Joe to figure out what’s going on. (This is a repeated theme of the series. Joe is a cloistered, solitary figure without much worldly exposure. But his lack of knowledge about something or inexperience doesn’t stop him from trying to find out the truth if he thinks something bad or criminal is going on, and that’s fun to watch.) Mary Beth actually plays a significant role here, because she has started working as an accountant for a real estate firm. She is really the brains of the couple and they both are growing more concerned about their finances as the girls grow older and Joe’s meager state salary becomes increasingly insufficient.

Overall, Trophy Hunt is another engaging and exciting entry into the Joe Pickett series. After four books, there’s a familiar rhythm to these books (which is another appealing element of most genre series) and that’s not a bad thing. If you liked any of the first three books you’ll like this one. Another (slightly unusual) feature of the Pickett books is that they are not strongly sequential, so one could read them out of order if you wanted to. This is an impressive authorial feat by Box. I am definitely going to read them in sequential order, because one can follow the characters change and grow, which provides an extra element of enjoyment to these already quite enjoyable books.!

Title: Trophy Hunt.
Author: C.J. Box.
Length: 348 pages.
Publisher: G. Putnam's Sons.
Date Published: 2004.
Date Read: October 15, 2020.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★★★ (5.0/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: A/A- (3.83/4.0).

PLOT: A.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: A-.
WRITING: A.

BOOK REVIEW: Winterkill (Joe Pickett, #3) by C.J. Box

 

Winterkill is the third book in C.J. Box’s long-running series featuring Wyoming Fish and Game Warden Joe Pickett as the main character. I was reasonably impressed with the first two book in the series, Open Season and Savage Run, mostly by their pacing and compact form. But since I generally prefer to read mystery/thriller books either written by female authors or with female protagonists I wasn’t in a particular hurry to continue reading books in this series starring a taciturn, emotionally inarticulate, highly principled “Lone Ranger” type of guy. However I had forgotten what a large role Joe’s family, in particular his wife Marybeth and daughter Sheridan, often play in the story. Sheridan was a huge part of the second book, Savage Run. It is also definitely true that Box is a master at building suspense, but it was the centrality of Joe’s domestic life, as well as his singular devotion to being the good guy that really stood out for me in Winterkill and has convinced me to put the many sequels higher on my burgeoning TBR (to-be-read) queue. Much of the story in Winterkill is animated by problematic and criminal behavior by problematic and criminal people. The book begins with Joe catching a fellow natural resources bureaucrat in the act of violating basic hunting quotas and through a series of seriocomical events we get our first dead body just as a huge snowfall deluges Joe’s Twelve Sleep County. (Isn’t that a great name?) The basic contour of the plot in Winterkill involves an inexorable build up to a seemingly unavoidable violent clash between a group of anti-government squatters and federal and state law enforcement officers who mutually detest each other. Joe does his darndest to try and help members of both sides see reason and past each other’s grievances, largely to no avail. This is the primary source of narrative tension in the book, and it is intensified further by involving the youngest member of Joe’s family, a girl named April whom Marybeth and Joe have been foster parenting for several years but whose adoption has been stalled by administrative inertia and bad luck. Despite abandoning her daughter like a sack of flour when she skipped town, April’s biological mother is back in town and is intimating she wants her daughter back (and of course she's a member of the caravan of anti-government crazies). Overall, Box again shows how interesting and compelling a read he can make from sparse ingredients such as a relatively straightforward plot, a well-drawn but familiar character in Joe Pickett and a modest page count. The unusual nature of the setting, a sparsely populated Wyoming town in winter, with unfamiliar characters caring about unfamiliar issues like hunting and fishing and natural conservation is another feature of these books. Together these pieces come together catalytically to produce a mystery which is more energetic than its component parts.

Title: Winterkill (Joe Pickett, #3).
Author: C.J. Box.
Paperback: 352 pages.
Publisher: Berkley Books.
Date Published: June 1, 2004.
Date Read: August 31, 2020.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★★★  (5.0/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: A- (3.67/4.0).

PLOT: A-.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: A-.
WRITING: A-.

BOOK REVIEW: Savage Run (Joe Pickett, #2) by C.J. Box

Savage Run is the second book in C.J. Box’s Warden Joe Pickett mystery series set in Saddlestring, Wyoming. I rad the first one, Open Season, earlier this year and liked it a lot. I know the series is quite popular, because on Goodreads these books often have thousands of ratings and hundreds of reviews which are overwhelming positive in general.

There are several good features of the Joe Pickett books: they are relatively short (under 300 pages), feature characters and settings that are unusual (wide-open countryside, cowboys and other rural residents) and are relatively suspenseful with thriller elements.

There are problematic aspects of the books as well. Joe Pickett is VERY taciturn and shockingly inept when it comes to the political aspects of his job as a state Fish & Game Warden in Wyoming. He is stubborn and doesn’t seem to make great decisions furthering his interests. His family of a wife and 2 girls is living in a state-furnished house and paycheck-to-paycheck but his actions frequently endanger his employment status. He often puts himself in danger by following leads by himself without any back up. He doesn't appreciate the unwritten rules which maintain the power structures in his state.

Savage Run  was interesting because the plot was basically about the fight between environmentalists and ranchers in the 1990s. The body count is larger than in the previous book but this serves to raise the stakes of what and who are involved. Also this time we were provided the perspective of the perpetrators, not just Joe's as he tries to figure out why and how someone was killed by an exploding cow. (The wry humor is another point in favor of these books.) In the end Joe is lucky to survive his showdown with some “tree huggers” and their opponents. (I don't really think this is a spoiler since this is book 2 in a series which is approaching 19 entries.)

Overall I enjoyed the book but I’m not convinced that these mysteries will be able to keep my attention to finish out the entire series. As I've said before, an important factor in evaluating the strength of a series is the attention the author pays to fleshing out the secondary characters (or sidekicks) in addition to the coplexity of the character of the protagonist. Joe is not complex, but he is an unusual "front man" for a murder mystery/police procedural and the setting of the books is definitely interesting. The secondary characters are basically his wife Marybeth and his young daughters. In, Savage Run Marybeth plays a larger role but his daughter Sheridan (who had a pivotal role in the first book) does not. Pickett does a lot of his work as a "lone wolf" and that's both a strength and weakness of the book(s).

Rating: 3.5 Stars

Title: Savage Run.
Author: C.J. Box.
Paperback: 304 pages.
Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons.
Date Published: May 6, 2003.
Date Read: August 4, 2018.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★½☆  (3.5/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: A- (3.33/4.0).

PLOT: B+.
IMAGERY: B+.
IMPACT: B+.
WRITING: B+.

BOOK REVIEW: Open Season (Joe Pickett, #1) by C.J. Box

A solid 4 stars.

Open Season is the first entry in the long-running Joe Pickett series by C.J. Box. It’s a police procedural mystery thriller set in Saddlestring, Wyoming where Pickett is a U.S. Game and Fish warden for Twelve Sleep County.

This is definitely an unusual setting since the area is so sparsely populated that the number of characters in the story is pretty small. Joe is the main character and he lives in Saddlestring with his pregnant wife Marybeth and his two daughters Sheridan and Lucy. Vern Dunnegan is his mentor (and previously held the warden job Joe now has). His best friend seems to be Wacey Hedeman, the warden in the next county. The other prominent character in the book is Sheriff Bud Barnum.

Since hunting and fishing is such a huge activity in Twelve Sleep County Joe is a very important person in the county, rivaling the Sheriff. There are very many non-local people who pass through his country taking advantage of the natural bounty to hunt, kill and trap the animals there. But sometimes some of these people get killed as well and that’s the start of our mystery. The body of a local guy (named Ote Keeley) is found with a seeping gunshot wound to the stomach in Joe’s garage.

The source of the suspense is that Joe’s family (especially his 7-year old daughter Sheridan) becomes involved in the investigation of what happened to Ote and eventually more dead bodies are found which leads Joe to discover a pretty big conspiracy. 

Joe is an interesting character who (like most characters that these  kinds of mystery series are built around) is flawed in many ways but in this case also has a very strong law-abiding core. He goes pretty wild when his family is threatened (for good reason). I believe I will read more books in the series because I’m curious to see what will happen to Joe (and his family, especially Sheridan) in the following books and to find out how Box has been able to come up with over a dozen compelling stories set in the sparsely populated Wyoming countryside featuring Joe Pickett. This one was a pretty quick read and quite suspenseful; definitely a solid entry into the mystery genre.

Title: Open Season.
Author: C.J. Box.
Paperback: 278 pages.
Publisher: Putnam.
Date Published: May 7, 2001.
Date Read: March 28, 2018.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★★☆  (4.0/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: A- (3.67/4.0).
PLOT: A-.
IMAGERY: A.
IMPACT: B+.
WRITING: A-.

Now There Are 32! Wyoming Becomes Marriage Equality State

Just a few days after Arizona became the 31st state with marriage equality, another red state has joined the throng of marriage equality states today when Wyoming abandoned its fruitless legal battle in light of the U.S. Supreme Court's October 6 decision to not hear an appeal of two appellate circuits (the 4th and the 10th)  rulings that the federal constitution requires marriage equality.

What this means is that in 32 states (see map), same-sex couples can get married while there are three more states (Kansas, Montana and South Carolina) where federal appellate court rulings indicate that laws banning marriage equality are presumed unconstitutional, since a federal appellate court has said so about a sister state's laws in the same circuit.

This also means that there are for more states where same-sex couples can get married than where there are LGBT-based civil rights laws. This means that a couple can get married, and if their boss finds out about it, they can be fired from their job due to their sexual orientation and there is no state or federal legal recourse.

I suspect that this dispute will be the next phase of the LGBT equality movement, but it will take an affirmative change in public policy in a lot of these states where same-sex couples are brave enough to take advantage of their right to marry has been recognized by federal judges to change the state's laws.

Hat/tip to Joe Jervis

U.S. Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) Outed As Gay

The number of conservative Republican politicians who vote against LGBT equality yet are outed as members of the LGBT community has increased by one. John Barrasso, the Republican U.S. Senator from Wyoming has been outed as a gay man by Mike Rogers, who has an impeccable record of being correct.

This weekend Rogers posted this tweet:

Curiously, when contacted by media outlets and blogs Rogers just says "my tweets stand on their own."

New Civil Rights Project provides a brief profile of Sen. Barrasso:

Barrasso, who earned a zero percent rating from HRC, voted against the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. He also voted against reauthorizing the Violence Against Women this year, which includes protection not only for women, but for “underserved populations” including sexual minorities and Native Americans. And he voted against the bipartisan expanded background checks bill that 91 percent of all Americans support.

Sen. Barrasso is also the chairman of the Republican Policy Committee, which pretends to be a legislative think tank, publishing policy papers like “Obamacare Exchange Opens Door to Fraud and Identity Theft,” and “Democrats Target Family Farms for Death Taxes.”

Senator Barrasso, 61, is a Presbyterian, divorced, remarried, and has three children. He is up for re-election in 2016. He is on Facebook and Twitter.

Sheesh. With the presence of openly lesbian Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, barely closeted Barbara Mikulski and previously outed Mark Kirk could LGBT people be actually over-represented in the United States Senate?