Category Archives: Reviews

Book reviews, as well as Reads to Reels

Cold wind

Posted on March 31, 2025 by smellincoffee

Joe Pickett, Game Warden, is not a fan of his mother-in-law, but he wouldn’t figure her for murder. One morning while making his rounds and checking herds, he notices something odd about the wind turbines being installed on the far … Continue reading →

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Images of America: Fenway Park

Posted on March 25, 2025 by smellincoffee

I’ve read three previous entries in the Images of America cities, but this is the first that takes me out of state, deep into the heart of Yankeedom: Boston’s own Fenway Park, home of the Red Sox. Fenway is the … Continue reading →

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Nowhere to Run

Posted on March 24, 2025 by smellincoffee

Warning: this review contains partial spoilers for Winterkill and Below Zero.  Joe Pickett is finally about to go home to Saddlestring after an exile in Baggs, where the governor sent him to keep a low profile – but there’s something … Continue reading →

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Below Zero

Posted on March 23, 2025 by smellincoffee

Warning: this review contains spoilers for Winterkill, #2 in the Joe Pickett series by CJ Box. Joe Pickett is cooling his heels in the hind quarters of Wyoming, thanks to ….uh, well, let’s just say repeated acts of insubordination in … Continue reading →

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Blood Trail

Posted on March 22, 2025 by smellincoffee

Terror in the deep woods! A hunter has been deliberately killed, then field-dressed like a deer. The gruesome sight makes Wyoming law enforcement realize that two prior ‘accidents’ may be connected, and Joe Pickett, Game Warden at Large, is asked … Continue reading →

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Free Fire

Posted on March 20, 2025 by smellincoffee

These days when Joe Pickett is building fences, it’s on his wife’s mother’s husband’s ranch property, rather than for the State of Wyoming. Joe’s tendency to get into trouble pursuing the truth, coupled with the appointment of a vindictive weasel … Continue reading →

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In Plain Sight

Posted on March 19, 2025 by smellincoffee

Saddlestring is a small town with a lot of big fish. One of those big fish, Opal Scarlett, has just been thrown in a river — or at least that’s what the sobbing drunk fisherman who threw her in the … Continue reading →

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Out of Range

Posted on March 18, 2025 by smellincoffee

Tragedy has fallen on Wyoming’s department of Game and Fish, as one of their district game wardens has been found dead, victim of a very messy suicide. Joe is asked to cover the man’s job for a few weeks, and … Continue reading →

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Trophy Hunt

Posted on March 17, 2025 by smellincoffee

Game Warden Joe Pickett’s peaceful fishing trip with his daughters is interrupted by a foul odor in the air — and following the scent, as the game warden must, leads him to an astonishing sight: the massive corpse of a … Continue reading →

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The Late Show

Posted on March 14, 2025 by smellincoffee

A few years ago Renee Ballard was an up-and-comer,  rising through the ranks at the LAPD’s detective ranks: then a supervisor sexually assaulted her, she reported it, and  soon found herself delegated to the ‘late show’.  She and her new … Continue reading →

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