I picked up Open Seasonbecause Hugh Hewitt recommends the author, C. J. Box. It was an enjoyable enough read, but I wouldn’t put Box in the first rank of mystery writers. Maybe it’s just because I’m such a tenderfoot, not sharing the author’s love of the great outdoors (though I like Stephen Hunter’s Bob Lee Swagger novels, which have plenty of fresh air, very much).

Joe Pickett, the hero, is a game warden in Wyoming. It’s what he’s always dreamed of doing, but things aren’t going smoothly. The pay is low and he has a wife and two daughters to support (another child on the way). On top of that, he makes a couple “bonehead moves” early on, like ticketing the governor for fishing without a license and (this is how the story starts) allowing a poacher to take his revolver away from him.

Still, he believes he’s getting the hang of things when the same poacher who took his gun away shows up one morning, shot dead on Joe’s wood pile. The only clue to his murder is a cooler containing the scat of unknown animals. Then two other “outfitters” are found murdered in a mountain camp, and Joe and two other officers get into a gun fight with the presumed killer.

But that’s only the surface of what’s going on. There’s money to be made in a gas pipeline going through the area, and these killings are collateral damage in a secret conflict which will test Joe’s integrity and threaten his own life and his family’s.

The best thing about Open Season was Joe Pickett’s character development. He starts out as a good but untested man, a little clueless, and slightly aggravating to the reader in his naïvete. But when he comes up against temptations to corruption, and learns that there is a mortal threat to his family, his real qualities come to light, and he becomes a formidable adversary.

Another interesting matter is the importance of the Endangered Species laws to the story. C. J. doesn’t get on a soap-Box on the matter, but the reader comes to better understand the difficulties—and temptations—that our Byzantine environmental regulations present to residents of the west. He cuts no slack for bad men, but does not overlook the bureaucratic stupidity that victimizes both animals and human beings.

I don’t think I’ll rush out to get another Joe Pickett novel, but you may like him better, especially if you’re an outdoorsperson. The usual cautions apply for language and adult situations.