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OPEN SEASON
by C.J. Box
Prime Crime, May 2002
304 pages
$6.50
ISBN: 042518546X


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

The Boston Herald called C.J. Box's debut novel, Open Season, (first in a series) Profoundly Memorable. Which it certainly is. But it also said Joe Pickett was a flawed male hero. I sure didn't see any flaws, and I'm fairly picky where men are concerned. On page 193 of the paperback, Joe's wife says this to him: "Joe, you are a good man. You're the last of your kind. Don't forget that. There aren't many like you left. You have a good heart and your moral compass is a model of its kind." I have to agree with her. Some of the reviews compared Joe Pickett to Gary Cooper, but I think he's more like Chuck Box.

Joe is a Wyoming Game Warden, an honest and honorable man, ecologically responsible, a devoted husband, a good father to two daughters. The older daughter, Sheridan, is one of the best portrayed girls I've seen in fiction since Scout in To Kill a Mocking Bird.

One morning, Sheridan reports that a monster has fallen on the woodpile. Joe finds Ote Keeley out there dead. Ote was a professional hunting outfitter, whom he'd last had dealings with up in the mountains when he'd caught him standing over three dead mule deer, four months ahead of junting season. Ote was not too sophisticated a character--his T-shirt read "Happiness is a warm gut-pile." In Ote's hand is a small plastic cooler with some animal excrement in it and signs that a small animal might have been confined in it.

I'm not going to say any more about that because it would be a spoiler, but Ote's death sets Joe off on a twisting trail that endangers his family, sets him in conflict with almost everyone and even loses him his job.

The magnificent Wyoming country is displayed in all its glory in this book. (I still remember the first time I saw Wyoming--so amazingly different from anything I had seen before.) Here's a quote from the book about Joe's part of Wyoming. "This is country where "Got your Elk yet?" is the local way of saying hello.

Joe has no problem with legal hunting--he thinks it's more honest to stalk, kill and dress an animal for eating, than to rely on a meat processing plant employee swinging a sledge-hammer and having the results appear in a small package in a supermarket.

Open Season is a beautifully written book with plenty of action and some interesting instrospection. It has elements of old Western frontier stories, but brought up to date with a compelling contemporary conflict at the heart of its plot. The book won an Anthony for best first, and I think a Barry also. Deservedly so. It was also nominated for an Edgar.

A wonderful story all around. I loved it.

I'll end with another quote--this time from the second book in the series, Savage Run. This is how the book begins: On the third day of their honeymoon, infamous environmental activist Stewie Woods and his new bride Annabel Bellotti were spiking trees in the Bighorn National Forest when a cow exploded and blew them up. Until then, their marriage had been happy.

I don't know about you, but I want to read on.

http://www.mchittenden.com

Reviewed by Meg Chittenden, March 2003

This book has more than one review. Click here to show all.

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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