Table of Contents
A New York Times Notable Book
One of the Chicago Tribunes Ten Best Mysteries of 2001
Edgar Award Nominee for Best First Novel by an American Author
UNPRECEDENTED ACCLAIM FROM CRITICS AND PEERS FOR C. J. BOXS
OPEN SEASON
Buy two copies of Open Season, and save one in mint condition to sell to first-edition collectors. C. J. Box is a great storyteller.
Tony Hillerman
Intriguing, with a forest setting so treacherous it makes Nevada Barrs locales look positively comfy, with a motive for murder that is as unique as any in modern fiction. Pickett is a refreshingly human and befuddled hero.... But its Boxs offbeat way of telling the story that puts it on the best-of-the-year track.
Los Angeles Times
C. J. Box has hit the bulls-eye his first time up. Open Season explores an honorable mans love of family and the unflinching measures such a man is willing to take to protect them. Riveting suspense mingles with flashes of cynical back-country humor and makes Box an author to watch. I didnt want this book to end.
Margaret Maron
C. J. Box... certainly knows the Wyoming territory Pickett covers.... Pickett is deceptive and complicated himself, a struggling young husband and father who combines eagerness and ambition, strength and fragility into an interesting, original package.
Chicago Tribune
Pickett [is] an engaging change from the fast-driving, trigger-happy male heroes of so many contemporary crime novels.... What really sets Open Season apart, however, is the authors ability to incorporate the viewpoints of his heros seven-year-old daughter into the story. Box does a very fine job of capturing the heart and fears of a young girl.... She is, indeed, an integral part of the story, and she adds a warm counterbalance to the relentless greed of the adults surrounding her. Open Season is a very promising debut.
The Washington Post Book World
A fabulous debuta great crime novel and a great modern-day western rolled into one. All the elements are here: a tremendous sense of Wyomings scenic grandeur, vivid characters, and a high-stakes plot that moves like a rifle bullet. Plus, as a bonus, hero Joe Picketts daughter, Sheridan, is the best-written child character Ive read in a long time. C. J. Box is a keeper, and I for one hope hell write a few more like this onesoon.
Lee Child
Open Season rings true... Box nails the taste and smell of the place, and in the process, creates a sensory experience that can be rare in fast-paced, plot-driven crime fictionwithout stalling the plot. He finds a way to weave the mysteries of landscape into the larger mystery at hand... Boxs yarn is full of the kind of grittiness a reader can expect from a place where blood and bone are not just the stuff of crime fiction, but of sport and survival, too.
The Denver Post
C. J. Box knows the Wyoming high country inside out, and his protagonist, Game Warden Joe Pickett, is as real and refreshing as they come. This one is a hunting trip and then some.
Les Standiford
C. J. Box has written a fast-paced, intelligent mystery that draws us into the wide open spaces of Wyoming and introduces a memorable hero: Game Warden Joe Pickett, unwilling detective and a man with a conscience. A page-turner and a remarkable debut.
Margaret Coel
Every few years a first novel appears that immediately sets itself apart from the crowd. As readers, we feel that special shock of recognition that announces, Here is something special. Taking dead aim with his first sentence... Box remains square on target throughout this nearly word-perfect debut.... Best of all, the soft-spoken Joe Pickett is a Gary Cooper for our time.
Booklist (starred review)
The unusual setting and flawed characters make for an enlightening, as well as suspenseful, read.
New York Daily News
Open Season is a lean, fast-moving thriller that proves you dont need an urban landscape to make the pages turn. With the exception of James Dickey, I cant think of another writer who has managed to wring so much white-knuckled terror out of rural America. This is a truly outstanding read.
Loren D. Estleman
Open Season is a western deco, vividly painted and fun as hell. I know nothing of the West, but C. J. Box is a superb guideand also a very good novelist.
Randy Wayne White
[A] debut mystery to be savored... Joe Pickett is a modern-day Gary Cooper, soft-spoken and good-hearted... [A] clever mix of mystery, western, and scenery-to-die-for... Box has created an enduring hero in Joe.... Once you stake out Open Season, you wont want to turn loose until the limit is bagged and the back cover is closed.
The Jackson (MS) Clarion-Ledger
Also by C. J. Box
The Joe Pickett Novels
OPEN SEASON
SAVAGE RUN
WINTERKILL
TROPHY HUNT
OUT OF RANGE
IN PLAIN SIGHT
FREE FIRE
BLOOD TRAIL
BLUE HEAVEN
To Molly, Becky, Roxanne, and especially for Laurie
my partner, my anchor, my first reader, my love
And thanks to Andy Whelchel and Martha Bushko, who
brought this to life
Prologue
When a high-powered rifle bullet hits living flesh it makes a distinctivepow-WHOPsound that is unmistakable even at tremendous distance. There is rarely an echo or fading reverberation or the tailing rumbling hum that is the sound of a miss. The guttural boom rolls over the terrain but stops sharply in a close-ended way, as if jerked back. A hit is blunt and solid like an airborne grunt. When the sound is heard and identified, it isnt easily forgotten.
When Wyoming Game Warden Joe Pickett heard the sound, he was building a seven-foot elk fence on the perimeter of a ranchers haystack. He paused, his fencing pliers frozen in midtwirl. Then he stepped back, lowered his head, and listened. He slipped the pliers into the back pocket of his jeans and took off his straw cowboy hat to wipe his forehead with a bandanna. His red uniform shirt stuck to his chest, and he felt a single, warm trickle of sweat crawl down his spine into his Wranglers.
He waited. He had learned over the years that it was easy to be fooled by sounds of any kind outside, away from town. A single, sharp crack heard at a distance could be a rifle shot, yes, but it could also be a tree falling, a branch snapping, a cow breaking through a sheet of ice in the winter, or the backfire of a motor. Dont confirm the first gunshot until you hear the second was a basic tenet of the outdoors. Good poachers knew that, too. It tended to improve their aim.
In a way, Joe hoped he wouldnt hear a second shot. The fence wasnt done, and if someone was shooting, it was his duty to investigate. Joe had been on the job for a only a week, and he was hopelessly backlogged with work that had accumulated since the legendary Warden Vern Dunnegan had retired three months before. It was the states responsibility to keep the elk herds out of private hay, and the pile of work orders on his desk for elk fence was nearly an inch high. Even if he built fence from dawn to dusk, he didnt see how he could possibly get it all done before hunting season started.
