Open Season
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4.1 • 2K Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Don't miss the JOE PICKETT series—now streaming on Paramount+
The first novel in the thrilling series featuring Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett from #1 New York Times bestselling author C. J. Box.
Joe Pickett is the new game warden in Twelve Sleep, Wyoming, a town where nearly everyone hunts and the game warden—especially one like Joe who won't take bribes or look the other way—is far from popular. When he finds a local hunting outfitter dead, splayed out on the woodpile behind his state-owned home, he takes it personally. There had to be a reason that the outfitter, with whom he's had run-ins before, chose his backyard, his woodpile to die in. Even after the "outfitter murders," as they have been dubbed by the local press after the discovery of the two more bodies, are solved, Joe continues to investigate, uneasy with the easy explanation offered by the local police.
As Joe digs deeper into the murders, he soon discovers that the outfitter brought more than death to his backdoor: he brought Joe an endangered species, thought to be extinct, which is now living in his woodpile. But if word of the existence of this endangered species gets out, it will destroy any chance of InterWest, a multi-national natural gas company, building an oil pipeline that would bring the company billions of dollars across Wyoming, through the mountains and forests of Twelve Sleep. The closer Joe comes to the truth behind the outfitter murders, the endangered species and InterWest, the closer he comes to losing everything he holds dear.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
C.J. Box’s long-running series about Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett are a blend of investigative thriller and modern Western, giving us a unique view of the rural West today. In this inaugural book, Pickett is a straight-arrow newbie who’s just replaced a local good ol’ boy who looked the other way when his friends broke the rules. And when a notorious poacher is found dead behind Pickett’s house, the repercussions pit hunters, environmentalists, and an oil conglomerate against each other, giving Pickett a crash course in local dynamics. This smart, layered, and manly mystery evokes Wyoming’s wide-open spaces.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Enthusiastic blurbs even from luminaries such as Tony Hillerman, Les Standiford and Loren Estleman can sometimes leave readers feeling as if they must have read a different book altogether. Not this time. Box's superb debut, the first in a series introducing Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett, should immediately make him a contender for best first novel or even best novel awards. Young Joe is struggling to fill the shoes of his mentor, legendary Vern Dunnegan, as warden of Twelve Sleep County, and trying to support his wife and growing family on the meager salary he makes. The hours are long, the work hard but satisfying, and Joe's honesty and integrity would pay off if he could avoid "bonehead moves" like ticketing the governor of the state for fishing without a license, for instance, or allowing a poacher to grab Joe's firearm from him. When that very same poacher turns up dead and bloodied in Joe's woodpile with only a cooler containing unidentified animal scat, his life, livelihood and family will never be the same. Upping the excitement are a couple of murders, local political and bureaucratic intrigue, a high-stakes pipeline scheme and an endangered species that Joe's eldest daughter "discovers." No one has done a better job of portraying the odd combination of hardy and foolhardy folk that make their homes in Wyoming's wilderness areas, or of describing the dichotomy between those who want to develop the area and those who want to preserve it. Without resorting to simplistic blacks and whites, Box fuses ecological themes, vibrant descriptions of Wyoming's wonders and peculiarities, and fully fleshed characters into a debut of riveting tensions. Meet Joe Pickett: he's going to be a mystery star.
Customer Reviews
Good book
Loved the story and how it was developed as the book went from chapter to chapter. It really made me root for certain people and hate others as I read the book.
Love it! I have binged every single one of them and I am eagerly awaiting the next one!
Wyoming game warden, Joe Pickett, is an everyday guy who is so endearing and interesting. The honest way he handles all the sticky situations he gets into by going the extra mile to find truth and justice makes him a hero in the end. I also love the beautiful way CJ Box writes about the setting in the American west. The characters that CJ Box surrounds Joe with are wonderful too, especially his friend Nate and wife Marybeth.
Realistic, fast-paced good vs. evil story
Characters are well- drawn, and the story could be taken from any newspaper out West. Couldn’t put it down, though it shows more people at their worst, than best.