Vicious Circle

Warning: this review contains substantial spoilers for Endangered.

Two years ago, rodeo star and all-around-terrible-human being Dallas Cates was imprisoned for multiple accounts of wanton elk destruction, an almost anticlimactic end to his family’s war against the state of Wyoming that saw almost off of the family killed, save for Dallas himself and his mother. Now Dallas is out of prison: meaner than ever, but now a lot more criminally savvy thanks to his two years with hardened human predators – and he is out for revenge against the family of Joe Pickett, the man he blames for the loss of his own. Although there’s some game warden business happening in the background here, it’s deep in the background: instead, the Joe vs Dallas show is front and center. Though I was surprised by the ending, the stakes and sheer hate-ability of Dallas made for yet another gripping Box read.

The story kicks off when Joe, riding in a search & rescue helo, spots through night-vision cameras the death of a man: the figure is surrounded by three others, there’s a muzzle place, and suddenly the body goes cold. The deceased is one Dave Farkus, who has bumbled through several of the Box books and nearly gotten himself killed through his Forrest Gump ability to be in the thick of things.(Of course, Joe is always in the thick of things, but that’s usually because he’s in pursuit of answers to a mystery.) Shortly before he met a sad death in the deep woods, Farkus called Joe and said he’d just heard three goons, including Dallas Cates, talking about Joe’s family and planning something. Now Farkus is dead. Although the evidence stacks up quickly against Dallas, Joe’s hunch that things are a little too good to be true proves on the nose, and soon the wife and kids are reduced to hiding in another county after a series of threats and direct attacks – and Joe himself realizes, after a confrontation with Dallas outside his own home, that the man is bitter, evil, and possessed by an inexorable urge to hurt and destroy Joe.

While I’m going to range far and wide of spoiler territory, I will say that the ending surprised me. Joe’s a far better man than me, that’s for sure. There’s a lot of good character work here, and I liked seeing Sheridan and April start emerging as adult characters in their own right – April, especially, since she’s had a tumultuous journey through this series and finally seems to be leveling out a bit. When she learns that Dallas is on the loose, she promptly buys a handgun – and the more Dallas appears in this novel, the more hopeful I was about his prospects for serving as her target practice. (He’s loathsome.) Given how intensely personal the story is, and how attached readers are to Joe at this point, the story roared by.

“Good evening, Game Warden! I’m Dave Farkus, an’ you should know — I voted for YOU in the last election.”
“……the game warden’s not an elected post, Mr. Farkus…..”