Well this was fun! I guess I needed a bit of a modern western shoot-em-up set in the Wyoming mountains with good guys and bad guys and some very deep resentments.  

Breaking Point
by C.J. Box, 2013
Read by David Chandler 10h 37m
Rating;   
#13 in the Joe Pickett series – 

I like the way C.J. Box draws our hero, Joe Pickett Game Warden, with an almost (not quite)  defiant attitude toward the usual authorities.  He’s not quite as angry as John Corey of Nelson Demille’s . He’s not even like Harry Bosch whose testosterone only takes him as far as doing things his own way when he really does NOT like the ways of his bosses.  Joe Pickett is a bit discerning trying to think things out and if someone is going to get killed,  or if his family is at risk, he won’t hesitate to go against whomever is “bossing” him.

In this book Tim Singwald, Lenox Baker, and Kim Love, three EPA enforcement officers, are hunting an apparently convicted felon so they can serve him with a judicial order. Singwald and Baker are from the federal agency but Love is local. This is near Grand Tetons in Wyoming, but Singwald and Lenox soon go missing.  

That’s when Joe Pickett, the series hero/protagonist and a game warden for the state of Wyoming, enters the story.  I very much enjoy the setting of Wyoming and the people we meet there. I suppose it’s educational when it gets to the politics Box almost touches on.  I love Joe’s family and have gotten to know them over the course of a dozen books plus (with about 12 left in the series). 

And his newish friend Butch Robinson disappeared into the forest a couple days ago so there is some concern there.  Butch’s daughter is best friends with Joe’s daughter, Lucy.  

One thing I like about these novels is the difference between city folks (Cheyenne or larger) and rural folks is somewhat emphasized. They sometimes have their own ideas about the natural resources, taxes, guns, building and hunting regulations, and so on.  Sometimes I get a wee bit leery about the politics – not of Joe’s so much as those of some of the others.   It seems the protagonists have excellent “family values”  (not the religious kind) although they sometimes agree with the less friendly neighbors.  This family and their ideas assures that the series is nicely saved. 

This time Joe is confronted by a new boss who has her own ideas and seems to want to keep the somewhat free-wheeling Joe on a leash. She’s not amused by a few of his methods – she wants him to remember whom he’s working for. 

Meanwhile, in the background overshadowing all of it, there seems to be a big scam going on, at least according to  Butch’s wife who says the EPA is on the hunt (with guns).

Well – it’s a thriller –