C.J. Box, author of the novel ‘Battle Mountain’
I’m starting a new column to run regularly in the Devils Lake Journal as long as I’m sticking around a while. The title is “Louise spending time with…”
Today’s column, the first of the series, is about C.J. Box, one of my favorite authors.
I’m spending time with C.J. Box.
Last night ‘way past midnight I finished reading Battle Mountain, which is the 25th in Box’s Joe Pickett novels. I’ve read every single one of them as well as the story collection he wrote which is set partially in the Badlands of North Dakota.
Box has a real knack for suspence.
He brings the reader along with the adventure, action and intrigue that leaves you breathless!
Pickett is described as a “Dudley Do Right” kind of game warden who knows his territory, an area of Wyoming we would call the Grand Tetons, near a location called Ten Sleep.
Ten Sleep is an actual place I have visited personally and enjoyed a winter vacation in January in the mountains with forty or fifty close friends.
The character, Pickett, has a reputation for honesty and being “by the book” so that he actually arrested the then governor of Wyoming for fishing without a license. Although it is part of the story and does not actually point the finger at whoever is the governor of Wyoming in the real world, it illustrates the kind of man Box has created in his series.
Two of Pickett’s friends figure largely in the story of Battle Mountain, as well, and these colorful characters are not quite as “Dudley Do Right” a pair as Joe is. They are Nate Romanowski and Geremiah Jones who are both a little difficult to define easily. Let’s just say they are master falconers who team up to rid the area of a really, really bad person who has a plan to do harm to many important people gathering at a Dude Ranch on Battle Mountain.
