Book #7 in the excellent series about a Game Warden from Wyoming.

Joe Pickett’s been hired to investigate one of the most cold-blooded mass killings in Wyoming history.

Attorney Clay McCann admitted to slaughtering four campers in a back-country corner of Yellowstone National Park—a “free-fire” zone with no residents or jurisdiction.

In this remote fifty-square-mile stretch a man can literally get away with murder.

Now McCann’s a free man, and Pickett’s about to discover his motive—one buried in Yellowstone’s rugged terrain, and as dangerous as the man who wants to keep it hidden.

CJBox.net

But is there really a part of the USA where you can kill anyone legally?

The theory: There is a 50-square-mile region in Yellowstone National Park where sloppy district boundaries would make the prosecution of serious criminal offenses unconstitutional — in other words, a region where one could get away with murder. …

Fact Check – USA Today

Click through to read the details.

EXCELLENT!

Out of Range is the 5th book in the Joe Pickett series by C. J. Box.

Our game warden is temporarily assigned to the Teton district out of the big city — Jackson, Wyoming.

Will Jensen, a fellow Wyoming game warden and a good friend, has killed himself. Joe can’t believe it. He takes the assignment partly to investigate the supposed suicide.

In Jackson the typical right wing citizens jostle with politicians, environmental extremists and rich out-of-State wannabe cowboys.

Books 6 is good too.

In Plain Sight — Ranch owner and matriarch Opal Scarlett has vanished under suspicious circumstances during a bitter struggle between her sons for control of her million-dollar empire.

Almost everyone hates Joe Pickett in this one. He eventually gets fired as game warden.

But in many ways, book 6 was my favourite in the series, so far. I’m certain I’ll be reading them all.

SEEMS I can’t watch the TV adaptation in Canada.

Sarah J. Maas writes young adult fantasy.

She got asked to write one book in a series called DC Icons.

This book kept me going. But it’s more of a cartoon than a novel. Action. Action. Action. No real plot.

Catwoman (Selina Kyle) debuted as “the Cat” in Batman #1 (spring 1940), she is one of the Dark Knight’s most enduring enemies.

She’s is a Gotham City burglar who typically wears a tight, one-piece outfit and uses a bullwhip for a weapon.

Eartha Kitt played the role in the 1960s Batman TV series.

Though mostly an antihero, Selina and Bruce Wayne are frequently depicted as having a romantic relationship. In one version, they eventually marry.

This book is Catwoman’s origin story

Two years after escaping Gotham City’s slums, Selina Kyle returns as the mysterious and wealthy Holly Vanderhees. She quickly discovers that with Batman off on a vital mission, the city looks ripe for the taking.

She teams up with Harley Quinn — the Joker’s former girlfriend — and Poison Ivy, her new girlfriend.

As Batman is out of town, their nemesis is Batwing (Luke Fox).

Click PLAY or watch the author on YouTube.

Book 3 in the Wyoming Game Warden Joe Pickett series.

Great start to the story:

It’s hours away from darkness with a bitter winter storm raging when Joe Pickett finds himself deep in the forest edging Battle Mountain, shotgun in his left hand, his truck’s steering wheel handcuffed to his right—and Lamar Gardiner’s arrow-riddled corpse splayed against the tree in front of him.

Lamar’s murder and the sudden onslaught of the snowstorm warns: Get off the mountain. …

CJBox.net

This book introduces the most interesting character in the series ➙ Nate Romanowski.

Romanowski is an ex-Special Black Ops soldier for the U.S. military. An the “outlaw falconer” who loves his birds more than anything else.

I learn something about the rural American western culture each book. In this one a group called the “Sovereigns” is camped on Joe’s turf. Government dissenters from Waco, Ruby Ridge and the Montana Freemen standoff.

It’s intense.

Jeffrey Archer is now in his 80s.

His current series features police officer William Warwick, late 1980’s London.

• Nothing Ventured (2019)
• Hidden in Plain Sight (2020)
• Turn a Blind Eye (2021)
• Over My Dead Body (Oct 2021)

In this one, Warwick is moved from Drugs section to investigating crooked cops.

Archer is a good story teller. Good vs Evil.

Plots that are simple to follow.

Protagonists you can cheer for unreservedly.

Ragnar Jónasson is the acclaimed Icelandic author of crime fiction. The Dark Iceland series is set in and around Siglufjörður, featuring Detective Ari Thor.

Iceland is the most literary nation on earth. According to the BBC, one in ten Icelanders will publish a book. Crime fiction is particularly popular.

Ragnar Jónasson started as the guy who translated 14 Agatha Christie novels into Icelandic. 😀

His debut novel, Snowblind (2010) introduces Ari, a rookie cop from Reykjavik, arriving in an idyllically quiet fishing village in Northern Iceland, where no one locks their doors – accessible only via a small mountain tunnel.

Ragnar spent many summers as a kid in Siglufjörður. He writes what he knows. 

Surprisingly, the author did not do his own translation to English. His translator is British though Ragnar did edit the English editions, as well.

When a young woman is found lying half-naked in the snow, bleeding and unconscious, and a highly esteemed, elderly writer falls to his death in the local theatre, Ari is dragged straight into the heart of a community where he can trust no one, and secrets and lies are a way of life.

An avalanche and unremitting snowstorms close the mountain pass, and the 24-hour darkness threatens to push Ari over the edge …

An intriguing plot for sure.

BUT I felt the translation I read was not particularly well written. Too simplistic. Key points repeated too often.

Jumping forward and backward in time didn’t work for me. It was confusing, not engaging.

Still good — but not as good as earlier Christie, in my opinion.

The Big Four is a secret international crime cartel with 4 leaders who want to dominate the world.

Claude Darrell, known as the Destroyer, is worst of the worst. He dies when their hidden lair of the Four explodes — or did he?

Perhaps the book seemed less precise because it evolved out of 12 short stories.

Others speculate that this novel was assembled at a low point in Christie’s life. She was arguing with her husband. They were soon to be divorced.

In fact, at one point in 1926 she disappeared for weeks. More than a thousand police officers, 15,000 volunteers, and several aeroplanes searched the rural landscape near where her car was found.

Eventually she was discovered in a hotel under an assumed name.

The Murder on the Links by Agatha Christie, first published in the US in 1923.

I’m astonished how skillfully this story was done. A female writer who just might be better than Conan Doyle.

It’s the second book in the series.

Hercule Poirot is even more genius. Sidekick Arthur Hastings even more easily duped.

The story takes place in northern France, giving Poirot a hostile competitor from the Paris Sûreté.

Renauld had been stabbed in the back with a knife and left in a newly dug grave adjacent to a local golf course.

The mystery is compounded when a murdered tramp is found, stabbed through the heart with the same(?) murder weapon.

New York Times Book Review:

 “The plot has peculiar complications and the reader will have to be very astute indeed if he guesses who the criminal is until the last complexity has been unravelled.

The author is notably ingenious in the construction and unravelling of the mystery, which develops fresh interests and new entanglements at every turn.

She deserves commendation also for the care with which the story is worked out and the good craftsmanship with which it is written. …”