Book 29 of 52: Endangered by C.J. Box

As I wrote in a review last year, in 2016, I set out on a quest to read all of Michael Connelly’s books (he’s best known for his character Detective Bosch). I didn’t read them all in a row, but would buy used copies of three to four of his books at a time, keep them on my to-read shelf, and grab one when the mood struck. I’m now caught up, so I’d been looking for someone else with whom I could do the same. Lee Child wasn’t right for me. Through a stop at a used bookstore in Bar Harbor, Maine last year, I landed on C.J. Box.

Endangered is his sixth novel in the Joe Pickett series (which is the basis for the Joe Pickett show on Paramount+, which I didn’t know about until I was well into this book). Pickett is a Wyoming game warden, looking into the slaughter of a flock of sage grouse. But while he’s trying to figure out who would do such a thing, he gets a call that his daughter April has been found on the side of the road, left for dead. And he’s pretty sure he knows who did it.

I started with Endangered because that’s the one I found in Hull’s Cove Bookstore (which has since sadly closed), and I know there’s stuff that happened in previous novels that informed some of the actions of characters in this one. Box gives a little backstory that I’m sure is there for the benefit of someone like me, but I still felt a little lost. It also has a lot of page breaks, which I found distracting,

But otherwise, the book was…and here it is again…aggressively fine! The story had twists I didn’t anticipate, which is what you hope with this kind of novel.

I ordered a used copy of the first book in the Pickett series, and it’s on my to-read shelf. I don’t think it’ll take more than a year to end up in my hands, as I’m a bit ashamed to say Endangered was (but hey — there’s a lot out there to read!)

Nail polish: Blinded by the Ring Light by OPI.

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