Category Archives: Reviews

Book reviews, as well as Reads to Reels

Storm Watch

Posted on May 3, 2025 by smellincoffee

While out and about doing Game Warden-type things,  Joe Pickett notices something odd. There’s a movable building of some sort hidden  away on a ranch property, and a man who appears to be stuck with his head in the window.  … Continue reading →

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The Highwayman read a western! Plus, game wardening in Maine

Posted on May 2, 2025 by smellincoffee

I’m going to short-round a bunch of Paul Doiron books and just comment on them in general, since the quality is fairly consistent from book to book. But first, on Willie Nelson’s birthday, I searched his name in Audible just … Continue reading →

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Shadows Reel

Posted on May 2, 2025 by smellincoffee

Game Warden Joe Pickett has been told about a dead moose on someone’s property, and has gone to investigate to see if it’s natural causes or someone winging a moose out of season and then living the poor creature to … Continue reading →

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Dark Sky

Posted on May 1, 2025 by smellincoffee

Joe Pickett has been asked by the governor to do something he’d….really, really, rather not do.  The governor wants him to take Elon Musk hunting. Well, not really:   the character’s name is Steve-Two, and he’s an eccentric techbro who … Continue reading →

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Wolf Pack

Posted on April 30, 2025 by smellincoffee

Joe Pickett is back on the job riding the ranges, documenting wolf expansion into the Bighorns, and trying to figure out who is using a large drone to frighten elk and deer herds around. He doesn’t just find the drone … Continue reading →

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Selma’s Mayor

Posted on April 29, 2025 by smellincoffee

Like most, if not all, Selmians, I was surprised and saddened by the sudden death of former Mayor George Evans. The mayor had been a figure in my life since I was a child, as he was the school superintendent … Continue reading →

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Short rounds: people and their places

Posted on April 29, 2025 by smellincoffee

In One No, Many Yeses, journalist and green activist Paul Kingsnorth detailed his journeys across the world, spending time with people who were actively resisting globalization — or rather, the disruptions that globalization caused in their local communities. Real England: … Continue reading →

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The Disappeared

Posted on April 28, 2025 by smellincoffee

Joe Pickett has a problem. The new governor,  who is a bully and an ass, has discovered that Joe used to do a little investigating for the former governor on the sly,  especially when local authorities were regarded as corrupt … Continue reading →

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The Poacher’s Son

Posted on April 27, 2025 by smellincoffee

Game Warden Joe Pickett Mike Bowditch just got a call about a bear attacking a man’s prized pig.  Mike’s just a rookie serving the Game and Fish department of the State of Maine in the middle of nowhere, so taking … Continue reading →

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Vicious Circle

Posted on April 26, 2025 by smellincoffee

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 … Continue reading →

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