Several years ago someone recommended C.J. Box to me so I proceeded to pick up a few copies of his books when I came across them or I felt an interest. However, I never got around to reading one until now. In the past I would read the cover and / or the first few pages to try and get the gist or find the motivation to read. Nope, something about that part of the US doesn't hold much interest. "Everyone" knows what kinds of people occupy or dominate that territory, and if you aren't like-minded - I'm not - I don't find myself keen to read about, it even if it is fiction.

But... I made the executive decision to finally give one a go and started in with Winterkill.

The good... well, I do like Box's writing, and he does pretty good with creating his characters.

I could go either way on the main character Joe Pickett since he always seemed slow on the uptake, he had difficulty connecting the dots when they were pretty much all connected in the first place. I really didn’t get that, but I suppose it was supposed to be because he was a "by the book" kind of guy. Still, "the book" isn’t quite as rigid as Pickett. This leads Joe Pickett to make a seemingly endless series of bad decisions and, predicable as all that is, all hell breaks loose. Let's put it this way, I prefer smart characters.

The only really likeable character in this book, and a great one, is Nate Romanowski. And not only is Nate Romanowski smart, he's way effing smart. Without him, this book might outright suck.

The rest of the book and characters, meh. If you can pile as many stereotypes that you can come up with all in one place then that's what we have here. Like I said above, we already know what the populace in Rocky Mountain States is like. And we know the fascist tendencies of the law enforcement types in the US. Here we get every local, state, and federal official complicit in breaking the law and outright murder. Far from impossible, but even for a story based over a handful of days it is a bit much.

Then there is the sequence of events that all line up like ducks in a row. I never quite figured out how the Feds rolled into town on the heels of the first hunting incident and murder let alone simultaneously with all the other players that dealt right into the hands of all the "few bad apples" in law enforcement. Independent of that, everything was all inextricably linked to Joe Pickett, his life, and his family. Again, it was too much of... let's come up with a bunch of random pieces and make them fit (with, oh, about the same probability of winning 10 multi-billion lotteries every day for 10 consecutive days).

But C.J. Box can write so Winterkill was readable and quickly finished. Points for that. ( )

Book 3 in Pickett series. Second time to read. A Federal Park employee is discovered by Joe shooting multiple elk on park land. When Joe arrests him, the man quickly handcuffs Joe to Joe?s steering wheel and escapes. Once Joe figures out a way to get his steering wheel off, he goes off to find him and finds the man pinned to a tree by high-powered arrows. All of this takes place during the beginning of a raging winter storm. The man dies while Joe carries/drags him to his vehicle. Agents from Washington DC have come to town thinking that a situation like Waco are in the works by a large group of Sovereigns who have come to camp out on a local campground. Among the campers is Joe?s ?adopted? daughter April?s mom who wants her back. April is kidnapped by her real mom, the Sovereign?s camp is ambushed, and April and her real mom are killed when the trailer they are in catches fire. In this book we meet Nate Romanowski, the falconer, when he is mistakenly arrested for the murder of the Federal Park employee. A lot of story lines that keep your interest.Kirkus: he latest in an award-winning series set in the Bighorn Mountains (Savage Run, 2002, etc.).Minutes after Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett arrests Lamar Gardiner, District Supervisor for the Twelve Sleep National Forest, for firing into a herd of elk, killing seven animals and blindly continuing to reload with cigarettes after he runs out of shells, Gardiner manages to handcuff Joe to his steering wheel and bolt off into a winter storm, only to turn up pinned to a tree with a pair of arrows, his throat cut. And things get even messier from that point on. The attack on a federal agent, together with reports that the Nation of the Rocky Mountain Sovereign Citizens has established an encampment in Twelve Sleep, brings gung-ho US Forest Service investigator Melinda Strickland and FBI sharpshooter Dick Munker, a veteran of Waco and Ruby Ridge, to town. Strickland maintains that she?s just trying to get justice for a murdered official, but she seems awfully eager to tie the perp to the Sovereigns. By the time Joe arrests one of Gardiner?s disappointing killers and identifies the other, Strickland and Munker are already planning an all-out attack on the encampment. The prospect is a personal nightmare for Joe, since Jeannie Keeley, the drifter whose abandoned daughter April Joe and his wife have been trying to adopt, has reclaimed April and spirited her off to the dubious shelter of the Sovereigns.The loose ends that make this the least satisfactory of Joe?s three cases to date still don?t inhibit Box?s gift for nonstop action and his ability to see every side of the most divisive issues in the West.

A sad and somewhat violent story of Joe Pickett and his family and the daughter they were trying to adopt. A story of trying to save her and keep an unnecessaey showdown from taking place. A troubling story, but well told.

(2003)Game warden Pickett must try to stop a Federal raid on a group of anti-government squatters on a Federal reserve, because his foster daughter has been taken there by her real mother. This results in that daughter's death and Joe is torn as to how to deal with the grief. In the end, the one responsible is killed by his friend Nate but it looks like suicide. Very good and fast read. Box is a good author and am happy to have him on my future reading list.Publishers WeeklyBox's stalwart game warden, Joe Pickett, is put to the test in his third grueling adventure in the Wyoming mountain wilderness. First, one of his prisoners escapes and winds up murdered by person or persons unknown. Then a group of militant survivalists who call themselves Sovereigns camp out in Pickett's territory. One of them, the birth mother of his foster child, April, has successfully petitioned the court to reclaim the little girl. Adding to Pickett's woes is a trio of lunatic lawpersons: the thick-headed local sheriff, a sociopathic Forest Service investigator and an FBI special agent who, having been on the front lines at Ruby Ridge and Waco, can't wait to try out his state-of-the-art weaponry on the Sovereigns. As if Pickett's backpack weren't already overloaded, he also has to make do with one of the worst snowstorms the area has seen in years.

A wild ride. It's nice that Box showcased how unhinged our alphabet agencies can be when unleashed upon citizens. It's good to see an author who includes Ruby Ridge and Waco as complicated subjects that questions the objectives of law enforcement in such matters.

The portrayal of Joe took steps that I wasn't prepared for. It was unexpected character development that I'd normally see as odd, but I'll let it go for now. ( )