This series. Well, I am not sure what I think as a whole but the individual books are pretty solid. I like that Joe Pickett isn't right all the time or a bad ass warrior who has all of the answers. I like his family, and I do like that the family faces the consequences of Joe's (in)actions. The daughters are well developed for young characters, even though I think 7-yo Sheridan acted more like a girl twice her age in the first book. I strangely dig Nate even though I am damned sure if he was a real person we'd probably never tolerate each other. But I think the real reason I keep reading is that Box does for Wyoming what Lehane did for Boston and Lippman does for Baltimore — he brings the state alive in a three-dimensional color that is always one of the stars of the books. So for all of Box's political agenda story lines and internal inconsistencies, I keep reading for Wyoming, and I think that's as good of a reason as any so far.What bothers me, and frankly, I hope I don't see all that much longer is when Box integrates class and race issues into his story lines. It happened with Jeannie Keeley in WINTERKILL as her being described as Mississippi white trash, etc. and even when the story was from her point of view she was given very little depth and understanding. To say that I was surprised at how Box wrote Joe observing the laughter between April and Jeannie is an understatement; it showed an understanding from Box and Joe that has been absent previously. In the short story, "Dull Knife," Joe finds the body of reservation basketball legend Jessica Antelope and Joe spends much of the story lamenting Jessica's choices and how res life has kept her down. Okay, I don't know if Box has lived on a reservation, but I have lived on two for many years and res life is not all meth and beer. The choices of a few characters does not reflect on a whole community, for fuck's sake. This passage sums up the main problems I have with Joe and his moral compass:Joe sighed and left the scene. He hated McLanahan’s casual racism. Worse, he hated the fact that in too many instances, McLanahan was right.Joe sees that McLanahan is an asshole and a racist to boot, and Box illustrates this well but what Box fails to do with Joe is have his main character achieve any kind of consciousness of his own racism. Instead, Box writes Joe as the moral character who wants no part of the sheriff's racist stories and idioms but at the same time Joe is there playing the Great White Hope by underscoring that McLanahan is actually right about Indians, he just shouldn't be so crude about announcing it. GAH!!! It's maddening and so absolutely expected that I can't even be that angry about Box's position because I AM NOT AT ALL SURPRISED. *sigh* Further Joe positions himself as the good white man by book-ending with Heywood who is the white man who wants to be Native. Every Indian knows one of these characters and I will give Box the credit that he must know one or two as well because Heywood's characterization is right on point. But I still feel that Heywood and McLanahan exist, in this story at least, to prop up Joe as the "good white" who can tell it as "it really is" while still being a good guy. It doesn't work that way; Joe can't condemn McLananhan's racism and then prop it up, he can't be irate about Heywood's infantilization of the res and then try to parent Jessica Antelope from the outside. Yeah, so I am continuing to read and I know what to expect from Box so I try not to get bent out of shape, but he's walking the line with me in that I can take so much but if it goes overboard, I'll pull out of the series.
A chilling short story of death and retribution from the New York Times-bestselling author of Cold Wind. Twenty-two degrees below zero on a high mountain lake in Wyoming. Game warden Joe Pickett was carefully sliding across to check the licenses of a group of ice fishermen on the lake, when he saw the strange faint yellow glow coming from beneath the surface and, when he got closer, the thin, spindly, black thing sticking up in the middle of it. His first thought was that it was a tree branch. But it wasn’t. It was a frozen human hand, reaching up through the ice...
What do You think about Dull Knife (2011)?
A freaky accidental death, righteous anger, and one of the best opening paragraphs I've ever read. "When it's twenty-two degrees below zero on a high mountain lake, the cracking of the ice makes an unearthly howling bellow that chills the blood and makes hearts skip a beat. The crack itself, looking like a jagged bolt of crystal-white lightning, zips across the ice with the flick of a lizard's tongue. But it is the sound of the crack, the plaintive, anguished moan, that penetrates a man and makes his skin crawl, remind him that if the earth wanted to swallow him up, well, it could. And no one could stop it. Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett froze with the sound and looked down at his feet as the crack shot between them."
—Barbara
