Home »
Initial taste of C.J. Box makes me want more
Book Review
By Derryll White
Box, C.J. (2004). Trophy Hunt.
C.J. Box is a new author to me, although I looked online after reading this novel and discovered a long list of Joe Pickett stories.
Joe is Box’s central character; a Wyoming game warden. C.J. Box is a Wyoming author, so that works out. The landscape features large here, giving the reader a sense of the state and a desire to visit and see it for real.
Wyoming is ranching and coal bed methane and both of these elements are in the forefront of action here. Joe Pickett is drawn into a series of wildlife and cattle mutilations, feeling a need for answers to what seems unexplainable. His oldest daughter Sheridan and his best friend Nate Romanowski have dreamy, woo-woo explanations, but Joe is a cold, process-type of guy. He wants concrete answers.
Box does a good job of looking at how society organizes itself and at how little room there is for the independent freethinker. It rings true when one thinks about it, even if more than a little depressing.
C.J. Box brings coal bed methane production to the stage here as well. This book is written at a time when this environmental issue was just entering the public eye. Joe Pickett asks time and again if this process of resource extraction can be detrimental to native species and also to humans.
I liked the way the author champions environmental concerns and the way he cautions the reader that things are seldom what they seem where other people are concerned. Joe Pickett is a strong, silent family man with a credible set of ethics. He likes his work and is committed to doing the best job he can. I liked what C.J. Box does here and the questions he asks about the world we are constructing for ourselves. I will read more of Box’s work in the future.
****
Excerpt from the novel:
WYOMING – From his vantage point, looking out at the plains, he could see forever. He loved this particular time in the fall for many reasons, but one of the major reasons was how the air and light seemed to sharpen, and everything was in perfect focus. In the summer, waves of rising heat rose from the plains and limited his field of vision. In the winter, moisture in the air or windborne snow did the same thing. This time in the fall the air was crisp and fresh and clear and the colors from the trees that filled the valleys gave the landscape a festive celebratory quality.
– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them. When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.
