Shadows Reel: A Joe Picket Novel
by C. J. Box begins the day before Thanksgiving. It has been a few weeks since
recent events (Dark
Sky: A Joe Pickett Novel) and Wyoming Game Warden Joe Pickett is still
recovering though he is back to work. He is feeling the aches and pains as his
body continues to heal as well as his age, but is glad to be out in the field
and doing his job. back at work He is looking forward to Thanksgiving and all
the company which will include Liv Romanowski and her baby daughter, Kestrel,
as Nate Romanowski is away and on the trail of the violent outlaw falconer, Axel
Soledad. That hunt and Nate’s POV becomes one of the three storylines in the
read and is slowly revealed.
But, at this point, that is all in the future as
Pickett and his dog, Daisy, head to business at hand. The destination is the
Crazy Z-Bar Ranch, where owner Lorne Trumley has reported a dead moose on his
property. The hunting season for moose ended a couple weeks ago so this is a
problem.
It soon becomes clear that a far bigger problem is
going on than a dead moose when he arrives in the general area. Something
smells like burned pork. Ravens are on top of the dark mound which is still
smoldering in spots as evidenced by the smoke/steam coming upwards on this
chilly morning. Pickett grabs his binoculars and looks at the mound and
suddenly everything is much clearer.
It is a body.
A body means investigation by the recently elected
Scott Tibbs. It also means that Sheriff Tibbs is not a fan of Joke Pickett and does
not appreciate the fact that Joe Picket has created a mess that has to be dealt
with at Thanksgiving. As if Joe Pickett scheduled and planned the events. Tibbs
does not want Pickett anywhere around, but of course Pickett is going to keep
his nose in the investigation as that is what he does.
He is not alone in that as his wife MaryBeth tends
to do the same thing with matters that his close to home. These days she is now
the director of the library and often comes to work before everyone else.
Pulling into her space at the library before dawn that same morning that soon
saw her husband looking at a smoldering dead body, she had witnessed somebody
leaving a package at the door of the building. The drop-off by the shadowy
figure was spooky as was the way the package appeared. It is only after she
takes some pictures of it and then unwraps the package does she realize that it
is some sort of detailed leatherbound photo album that dates back to the 1930s.
It documents a year in the life of a Nazi government official by the name
Julius Streicher. It is a legacy of nightmarish history.
It is also a book that some will kill for as Mary
Beth, Joe Pickett, and family and friends soon learn. They want it back and don’t
care what they have to do to get it.
Nate’s hunt for the violent outlaw falconer, MaryBeth’s
album, and the discovery of the body by Joe Pickett, are the three plot lines
that are the storytelling pillars of Shadows Reel: A Joe Pickett Novel
by C. J. Box. As befitting a book in a well-established series, there is not
really any character development here. Much of the read is from the perspective
of Mary Beth as she researches the book and comes to grips with the horrors it
represents as well as the current threat that exists. Because of that situation
as well as the hunt by Nate, much of this book has Joe Pickett regulated to the
sidelines. This reader prefers reads where he is front and center and not so much
on the periphery of various things. Still, while not the best work in the
series, this reader enjoyed the complicated tale.
My reading copy came from the Dallas Public Library
System by way of the OverDrive eBook app.
Kevin R. Tipple ©2022
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