Joe Pickett, Wyoming Game Warden extraordinaire, is out in his truck and going about his business when he discovers a dead body hanging in a building full of “sheds” – the antlers of moose which are shed in the fall after mating season.  He discovers this outside a high-tech facility, but why is it so remote? T he body is that of a professor from the University of Wyoming who has gone missing.  

Storm Watch 
by C.J. Box / 2023
Read by David Chandler 9h 4m
Rating A / western crime procedural but … 
#23 in the Joe Pickett series 

I really enjoy listening to David Chandler read the books of CJ Box, but I’ve only read 6. The latest 4 and the first 2 out of a total 23.  They’re available at my library, too, but usually with month-long waits.  Chandler is excellent, his reading skills excel at differentiating the characters and raise the rating by a whole letter grade. I’ve also read all 6 of Box’s Cassie Dewell novels, that’s actually how I got into the Joe Pickett series. 

Yes, the critics are technically right, the book is political in a way, but I guess it was within my limits because it didn’t bother me a bit except I didn’t think it was particularly realistic. A few parts were actually kind of stupid,  but the regular characters and the masterful building of suspense along with the wild and open natural setting of Wyoming are the draw for me.