C.J. Box's "DARK SKY"
Book review by Dennis D. McDonald
By now readers know that politics and class differences often show up in C.J. Box’s Joe Picket series of novels about the straight-laced Wyoming game warden who is forever finding himself in the middle of trouble. Rich folks, Hollywood types, dude ranchers, and camo-clad millennial from Back East seem to make their way to the Wyoming area patrolled by Pickett. The locals’ contempt for these folks — but not their money — is always simmering under the surface.
This time around the object of contempt is a self-centered billionaire tech magnate whose personality is like an amalgamation of Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. He runs a vast Facebook-type social media empire and his current fixation is experiencing the Great Outdoors. Wyoming‘s governor wants to have the company to build a job generating server farm in the state. He assigns Joe the unenviable job of honchoing a week long backwoods elk hunt so the billionaire can experience the great outdoors first hand — and maybe shoot an elk with his bow and arrow in the process.
Naturally the elk hunt goes awry (this is after all a Joe Pickett novel). This time the bad guys are locals who hate the rich guy for reasons that are gradually revealed. The body count rises as the hunting party is hunted. Joe and the survivors are challenged to survive in the wild without weapons, food, or communications.
The action is up to the author’s high standards. Also displayed on nearly every page are knowledgeable references to guns and rifles of all types, animal behavior, and the vagaries of Wyoming mountain weather.
One thing that surprised me were several references to one of the the bad guy’s support for “antifa“ giving the impression that that is a real organization. While there have been frequent political references in Box’s books, especially a standard Westerner-based mistrust of the Federal Government, the antifa references are dropped in casually with regard to a villain I expect will show up in the next Joe Pickett novel.
While I’ve grown accustomed to the Joe Pickett novels’ anti-Washington bias – he’s based in Wyoming after all--I do hope Joe doesn’t end up being too political for his own good.
Review copyright 2021 by Dennis D. McDonald