Blood Trail by C.J. Box: A review

What a ride! What a read! I think C.J. Box has got the hang of this Western thriller thing. This is the eighth entry in his Joe Pickett series and they've gotten better and better. This is easily the best one yet, in my opinion.

The events in this book take place a bit less than a year since the last book, Free Fire, which was set in Yellowstone National Park. We find that Joe, who was fired from his position as game warden in Saddlestring, Wyoming, is still on board as a special agent for the governor, which means that he's at the governor's beck and call to handle whatever assignments he decides to hand out and be the governor's eyes and ears on the ground.

For the first time in their lives, Joe and his wife Marybeth have bought a house. They are no longer living in government housing and are enjoying(?) the status of homeowner with all its responsibilities and the headaches of living up to their neighbors' expectations of yard and home care. Their older daughter, Sheridan, is now a teenager and experiencing the upheavals of that fraught chapter of life.

Meanwhile, Joe's friend, Nate Romanowski, who was betrayed and arrested by the Feds at the end of the last book, is languishing in prison, awaiting trial for allegedly murdering a sheriff.

All of these changes to his life are making Joe Pickett a very unhappy camper.

Then, suddenly, Joe is shocked out of his personal ennui by a series of murders. Hunters are being hunted and killed and their bodies mutilated. The first two killings in different parts of the state were ambiguous and might have been hunting accidents, but then the body of a man is found at a hunting camp in the Saddlestring district, strung up from a tree, gutted and flayed and the head removed as hunters would do for an elk. This was no accident.

Hunting is important to the economy of Wyoming and the governor is concerned that he's going to have to shut it down in the interests of public health and safety. He assigns his man, Joe, to help with the investigation. He hires a famous man tracker to come and try to track down the perpetrator.

The tracking does not go well and soon there are more dead bodies on the ground, including the tracker himself.

The investigation regroups and Joe advocates for bringing Nate in because he knows the area and is himself an expert tracker. The governor agrees and, over FBI objections, Nate is released into Joe's custody. Now that the two are reunited readers of this series will feel confident that the mystery will be solved and justice - at least a rough justice - will be served.

I thought Box did a great job with the plotting and pacing of this thriller. The writing was tight, spare, and clean. He gives us a narrative by the hunter of the hunters, as well as the third person report of Joe's and Nate's perspectives. Speculation about the identity of the killer ranges from an anti-hunting activist to a lone psychopath or to someone with a personal vendetta. But what could that personal vendetta possibly be? There seems to be no connection between the victims, other than the fact that they were hunters.

Box plays fair with his clues and I am proud to say that I began to get a glimmer of the solution to the mystery perhaps halfway to two-thirds through the book. By the time of the conclusion, I was pretty confident in my reasoning. I will just say that reading this book at this time of heightened sensitivity to the issue of sexual harassment and violence probably gave me added insight to the possible motive behind the killings.

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Poetry Sunday: Don't Hesitate by Mary Oliver

How about we share another Mary Oliver poem? After all, you can never have too many of those. In this one, the poet seems to acknowledge that it is often hard to simply live in and enjoy the moment, perhaps because we are afraid it can't last. She urges us to give in to that moment and fully experience the joy. Although "much can never be redeemed, still, life has some possibility left." Don't Hesitate by Mary Oliver If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is no...

Poetry Sunday: Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney

My mother was a farm wife and a prodigious canner. She canned fruit and vegetables from the garden, even occasionally meat. But the best thing that she canned, in my opinion, was blackberry jam. Even as I type those words my mouth waters! Of course, before she could make that jam, somebody had to pick the blackberries. And that somebody was quite often named Dorothy. I think Seamus Heaney might have spent some time among the briars plucking those delicious black fruits as well, so he would have known that "Once off the bush the fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour." They don't keep; you have to get that jam made in a hurry! Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney Late August, given heavy rain and sun For a full week, the blackberries would ripen. At first, just one, a glossy purple clot Among others, red, green, hard as a knot. You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust ...

Poetry Sunday: Hymn for the Hurting by Amanda Gorman

You probably remember poet Amanda Gorman from her appearance at the inauguration of President Biden. She read her poem "The Hill We Climb" on that occasion. After the senseless slaughter in Uvalde this week, she was inspired to write another poem which was published in The New York Times. It seemed perfect for the occasion and so I stole it in order to feature it here, just in case you didn't get a chance to read it in the Times . Hymn for the Hurting by Amanda Gorman Everything hurts, Our hearts shadowed and strange, Minds made muddied and mute. We carry tragedy, terrifying and true. And yet none of it is new; We knew it as home, As horror, As heritage. Even our children Cannot be children, Cannot be. Everything hurts. It’s a hard time to be alive, And even harder to stay that way. We’re burdened to live out these days, While at the same time, blessed to outlive them. This alarm is how we know We must be altered — That we must differ or die, That we must triumph or try. ...

The Nature of Things

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