Some writers take many pages to hook you and reel you into the story. In the latest Joe Pickett novel, C.J. Box does it in the first paragraph of the book!! When Nate Romanowski pushes a drift boat in to the Bighorn River and sets sail down river toward the mansion of the man he is going to kill!! Now if this is the first book of the series, you may just like Box’s descriptive prose, but if you’ve read a few of the books or in my case all but one of the fourteen books in the series, you said to yourself “Nate is going to murder someone!” Whoa, this is not going to end well! See Nate is the shadowy friend of Joe and his family, and always seems to arrive on the scene when Joe needs him the most, but he is also on the run from the Feds. Can this be why?? So starts Book 10 for 2014, Stone Cold from C J Box.
Soon Game Warden Joe Pickett is sent on a special assignment by Governor Rulon of Wyoming to investigate the wealthy Wolfgang Templeton who appears to be buying up all of Medicine Wheel County in the Black Hills of Wyoming. It seems that the Feds are concerned because they believe that Templeton is running a murder for hire ring for a very wealthy clientèle! Joe is being sent to gather information, but to not get involved, like that’s gonna happen, and it even becomes more personal when Joe is shown a grainy video taken outside the home of one of the victims. That can’t be Nate, can it??? Then, as if Joe doesn’t have enough on his plate worrying about Nate, Joe’s daughter Sheridan, who is a Resident Advisor on a dorm hall at the University of Wyoming, calls with concerns about on of her residents. There’s a mysterious young man on her floor that always wears a long black coat and constantly plays violent, shot them up video games!
So off Joe goes to Medicine Wheel and the Sand Creek Ranch, with worries about Nate and Sheridan, think he stayed out of trouble??? The action is fast and furious and the pages flew by, like they do in every Pickett novel. The characters are well-developed, hey they’ve been developed over fourteen books, and are constantly changing, everything that is except Joe’s strong moral character, but how about Nate’s??
Check it Out! Now you may want to read a few of the earlier books first just to get a feel for Joe and Nate’s relationship as well as more about the rest of Joe’s family!! Enjoy!
