About
Reviews
Search
Submit
Home

Mystery Books for Sale

[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]


  

BADLANDS
by C.J. Box
Minotaur Books, July 2015
288 pages
$26.99
ISBN: 0312583214


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

I opened this book with a great deal of trepidation. I have loved Box's Joe Pickett books, set in Wyoming and with a game warden as a main character. Here, Box moves the action to North Dakota and there's not an animal in sight (unless you consider the nasty humans animals). There's nothing to fear, though. Box is the same wonderful writer he has always been, even as he takes on the much darker atmosphere of the drug trade in the oil fields and man camps of Grimstad, North Dakota.

Kyle Westergaard is a mentally challenged pre-teen in a family where it seems likely his disabilities are associated with his mother's drug and alcohol abuse. He feels responsible for his mom and takes on a paper route that has him biking in negative double digit temperatures throughout the town of Grimstad. On one such trip, he happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and sees a car chase which ends in the death of the driver and with Kyle picking up a bag that flew from the car as it crashed down a hillside. The drugs and money that are in the bag set in motion a drug war in which his mother is collateral damage.

Kyle serves as an almost invisible observer as the action, often gruesome, plays out. Cassie Dewell, the new deputy sheriff, seems to be the only one who sees him as he bicycles through town, observing one important clue after another. Cassie's first job in town takes advantage of her newness; she is charged with a behind-the-scenes investigation of the accident and death which Kyle had observed. The sheriff believes there is more to the story than an automobile accident and, unsurprisingly, he turns out to be correct. Police corruption, violent motorcycle gangs, and Salvadoran mobsters all play roles in the violence that grips Grimstad in Cassie's first days.

Box does his usual terrific job of describing the landscape in which the action plays out, and he creates a hugely sympathetic character in Kyle. Cassie is less well developed as a character but, since it seems as though Box intends her to become a series lead, we will have more chances to get to know her better. She appeared in an earlier book, THE HIGHWAY, and it appears likely that BADLANDS is just the next in a series. I can only hope Box can keep two series going; I'd hate to see the Joe Pickett books end!

§ Sharon Mensing is the Head of School of Emerald Mountain School, an independent school in the mountains of Colorado, where she lives, reads, and enjoys the outdoors.

Reviewed by Sharon Mensing, August 2015

[ Top ]


QUICK SEARCH:

 

Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]