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SAVAGE RUN
by C. J. Box
G. P.Putnam's Sons, May 2002
272 pages
$23.95
ISBN: 0399148876


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Open Season, C. J. Box’s first mystery, was nominated for many prizes and received great acclaim. This is the second in the series featuring Joe Pickett occasionally inept and certainly human Wyoming Game Warden. He is, I am happy to report, learning to do his job a little bit better and it is his competence, as much as accident, that allows him to succeed in this suspense novel.

Ecoterrorists and those who support them are being murdered. We very quickly learn who is doing the murders, two men who are crisscrossing the country by car and killing each of these people in the way most embarrassing to their memory. The first murder is of Stewie Wools and Annabel, his bride of three days. They are killed when a cow explodes and it appears to law enforcement that Stewie was trying to blow up the cow and incompetently set off the explosives too soon.

The excitement and suspense in this book comes from Pickett trying to discover the murderers which other law enforcement officers are inclined to write off as unimportant and then to avoid getting killed himself. The Savage Run of the title is a canyon deep in the nearly inaccessible wilderness but part of the spread of Jim Finotta, the owner of a huge ranch who completely disregards environmental laws. Finotta and Pickett lock horns and Pickett in his stubborn dogged way refuses to ignore the violations.

The action takes place in the rugged land of the Bighorn Mountains and the setting becomes a major character in the book. The towering peaks, the canyons, the foothills, the vegetation, the wild life , bears, elk, wolf as well as smaller creatures, all of these become an essential part of the story and the book is worth reading to visit this land even if you had no other reason to do so. It is beautiful, it is stark, it is in many ways primitive, and it is our heritage.

There is a real conflict between those who believe that this land was created for the white man to do with as he pleases and those who would keep it and protect the life that is already there. When the white man came 150 years ago it seemed as though there was more than enough of everything to go around. Slaughtering wolves in order to run their cattle seemed only logical. Cutting trees to create ranches was making good use of the land. But now species are endangered and the vast forests are disappearing.

Today there are those who say none of these things should be done and who go a step further and by violence try to prevent the continual cutting of trees or killing of wolves. It is the friction between these two points of view that is at the heart of the suspense in this novel. The cattlemen feel they have been pushed too far and are now willing to use violence to stop the environmentalists. Joe Pickett finds himself in the middle and must somehow halt both groups if the wilderness is to survive not to speak of himself.

Reviewed by Sally A. Fellows, October 2002

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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