A few months ago I started reading a new detective story. You kow how it is with detective novels: you must read carefully from the start or you might miss something that could be important later on. So I memorised the names of the two characters, I learned by heart who was young, who was old, who was married, who was single --- and just, when I felt well prepared for the rest of the novel, I reached the end of chapter one and they were both shot.
I sighed and started chapter two, which luckily introduced some characters who survived.
That was the beginning of "Breaking Point", number 13 in the series of the detective novels around Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett, written by C.J. Box. I couldn't stop reading and after a few days I reached a point that was so breathtakingly exciting that I thought for a moment of calling in sick and not going to work, so that I could find out how it ended. Well, I didn't, Joe Pickett would not have approved.
But I got the other 12 books of the series, because I noticed that despite the fact that all stories could stand on their own, there was the development of the hero and his family and some connecting storylines. So for weeks I have read one book after the other and am still as fascinated as I was by my first introduction to Joe Pickett and his adventures.
One thing I like is the setting: never before have I read a book about rural Wyoming, about the Rocky Mountains and the people living there. The main characters love it - the wilderness, the force of nature and the freedom they have. It makes me want to go there and have a look myself.
I particularly like the fact that I am confronted with new ideas that make me think. For instance the story of the "Miller's weasel" (a fictitious extinct animal) and the impact of too much public interest and "protecting" an endangered species that can be more lethal to the poor things than a change in their environment. On the whole, a lot of the stories shed new light on "environmentalists", who seem to be more interested in their own fame than in the animal they want to "protect".
And of course, the characters. Joe Pickett, who gains experience and does things he would never have thought possible. He is a very human hero, not without faults, but always true to himself. His family, particularly the kids growing up and sometimes being part of the story. His wonderful wife - and I like to think that the auther models her on his own wife; after all, all his books are dedicated to her, too. Bureaucrats that make me boil with anger because of their stupidity and arrogance. Warm-hearted and wonderful people who help Joe. And the mysterious Nate who seems to have come directly from the old West, taking the law into his own hands, if necessary, thereby personifying his own archaic form of justice.
Still ... weeks and weeks of reading about murder and bloodshet is not without bad side effects: I see murderers everywhere and catch myself looking for my gun before I take off on a lonely journey to the supermarket ( after all, a 5-minute-drive). I think, when I am finished I will have a period of romantic love stories... until I can get hold of the next Joe Pickett novel.
PS: You can find C.J. Box on Facebook and here is his website http://www.cjbox.net
