Open Season (Joe Pickett Series #1) by C. J. Box

From the Publisher

The debut of a writer hailed by Tony Hillerman as "a greatstoryteller" -- the first book in an engaging and gritty mystery series featuring Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett.

"C. J. Box has hit the bull's eye his first time up."
--Margaret Maron

"A fabulous debut -- a great crime novel and a great modern-day Western rolled into one. All the elements are here -- a tremendous sense of Wyoming's scenic grandeur, vivid characters, and a high-stakes plot that moves like a rifle bullet. C. J. Box is a keeper."
--Lee Child

Few first mysteries have been welcomed as enthusiastically as Open Season, or with better cause.

"When a high-powered bullet hits living flesh, it makes a distinctive -pow-WHOP-sound that is unmistakable even at tremendous distance." And so it begins for Joe Pickett, a Wyoming game warden who, with the shot of a rifle, is thrust into a race to save not only an endangered species, but also the life and family he loves.

C. J. Box knows the wilderness and he knows how to create a wonderfully authentic, vividly alive sense of place. Most of all, he knows how to create a memorable new hero: a man who is full of failings, but strong and honorable. This is mystery writing at its best-and the beginning of a brilliant new career.

Author Biography: C. J. Box, a native of Wyoming, has worked as a ranch hand, a surveyor, a fishing guide, and as a small-town newspaper reporter and editor. Box is the president and CEO of Rocky Mountain International Corporation, a company that coordinates marketing for the state tourism departments of Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota, North Dakota, and Idaho.

Chicago Tribune

...as a former ranch hand, surveyor, fishing guide, newspaper reporter and coordinator of tourism [Box] certainly knows the Wyoming territory...

USA Today

...a fascinating, well-scripted debut novel....It's a classic tale of Wild West justice.

New York Daily News

The unusual setting and flawed characters make for an enlightening, as well as suspenseful, read.

Boston Globe

...an appealing first novel...

Denver Post

Box's varn is full of the kind of grittiness a reader can expect from a place where blood and bone are not just the stuff of crime fiction, but of sport and survival, too.

New York Times

Box writes as straight as his characters shoot, and he has a stand-up hero to shoulder his passionate concerns about endangered lives and liberties.

Washington Post

Open Season is a very promising debut. Here's hoping the author's restraint and intelligence carry over into future Joe Pickett novels.

Library Journal

The publisher is really excited about this debut mystery, set in Wyoming and featuring game warden Joe Pickett. Events center on a desperate battle to save an endangered species, lifting this work above standard genre fare. Box is president and CEO of Rocky Mountain International Corporation, which manages tourism for several Western states. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Rookie Twelve Sleep County Game Warden Joe Pickett's not much of a shot, and he's been looking like a goat ever since poacher Ote Keeley got the drop on him with his own gun during a routine arrest. But at least he's doing better than Ote, who's turned up dead on the woodpile outside Joe's house. Joe's search in Crazy Woman Creek canyon for the two outfitters and guides Ote was most recently partnered with ends happily, though violently, and suddenly Joe is the man of the hour. Longtime County Sheriff Bud Barnum nervously asks Joe's assurance that he's not going to support neighboring game warden Wacey Hedeman's challenge in the upcoming election; trophy wife Aimee Kensinger, who really likes men in uniforms, invites Joe's family to housesit her palatial digs for three weeks; and wily Vern Dunnegan, Joe's predecessor, wants Joe to join him in pulling down big bucks from InterWest resources, the fat-cat corporation for whose gas pipeline Vern's lining up local support. All this good news is only a front, of course, for a monstrous assault on Joe's livelihood, his integrity, and his family-and incidentally on an inoffensive species long assumed extinct. In response, Joe promises one of the bad guys that "things are going to get real western," and that's exactly what happens in the satisfyingly action-filled climax. A high-country Presumed Innocent that moves like greased lightning. First of a welcome new series, though it's hard to imagine tourism-marketing exec Box topping his debut.

What People Are Saying

Lee Child
A fabulous debut-a great crime novel and a great modern-day Western rolled into one.

Dave Bragonier
...an exciting nonstop ride...CJ Box has the uncanny ability to hold your full attention throughout this intriguing murder mystery....

Les Standiford
Open Season is a wilderness thriller...This one is a hunting trip and then some.

Randy Wayne White
Open Season is Western Deco, vividly painted and fun as hell...CJ Box is superb guide-and also a very good novelists.

Gerry Boyle
Open Season is a twisting, turning trail ride of a book. Readers won't want the ride to end. I didn't.

Tony Hillerman
CJ Box is a great story teller.

Margaret Maron
CJ Box has hit the bull's eye his first time up. Riveting suspense mingle with flash of cynical, back-country humor....

Loren D. Estleman
...a lean, fast-moving thriller that proves you don't need an urban landscape to make the pages turn...a truly outstanding read.

Product Details

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