TREASURE STATE: A CASSIE DEWELL NOVEL (audiobook) by C.J. Box
Published in 2022 by Macmillan Audio.
Read by Christina Delaine.
Duration: 9 hours, 20 minutes.
Unabridged.
Montana private investigator Cassie Dewell's latest adventures are actually two overlapping cases. One involves a hidden treasure of gold coins. Clues to the treasure were written by an unknown poet who wrote them in a poem on a dry erase board (the "daily specials" board) in a small town restaurant. Dewell is ostensibly hired by the author to see if the treasure can be found by tracing the author's literary footprint. I was immediately struck by the thought that a treasure hunt inspired by a poem story line had already been explored in the TV show Longmire. I would imagine that a great proportion of C.J. Box readers are also Longmire viewers.
Read by Christina Delaine.
Duration: 9 hours, 20 minutes.
Unabridged.
Montana private investigator Cassie Dewell's latest adventures are actually two overlapping cases. One involves a hidden treasure of gold coins. Clues to the treasure were written by an unknown poet who wrote them in a poem on a dry erase board (the "daily specials" board) in a small town restaurant. Dewell is ostensibly hired by the author to see if the treasure can be found by tracing the author's literary footprint. I was immediately struck by the thought that a treasure hunt inspired by a poem story line had already been explored in the TV show Longmire. I would imagine that a great proportion of C.J. Box readers are also Longmire viewers.
The second case involves a swindler who finds lonely wealthy widows, romances them and bilks them out of some of their money with fake investments. Another private investigator from Florida had come to Montana with a lead but disappeared. Dewell picks up the case and finds more than she bargains for...
****
This was a hit and miss book for me.
Cassie Dewell has always been C.J. Box's second series when compared to his work with Joe Pickett. There are fewer Dewell novels and they tend to have more extreme plot twists like deaths of main characters, career changes, moving to different states and more. This book at least offers some stability of keeping Dewell in the same career in the same state at the end of the book. I think the future health of the series is helped by the addition of a familiar character from the C.J. Box multiverse.
The story has some weird plot holes that don't stand up if the reader thinks about them very long afterwards. If the person who has hidden the treasure truly wants to stay hidden, why even tempt a trained investigator with a staff to help her who already has a proven track record of taking down a serial killer and a corrupt police department? He even provides a clue that leads straight to the author of the treasure poem.
Personally, I think this was an excuse for Box to introduce a bunch of author characters that Dewell interviews throughout the book. They are a diverse bunch and most are not very flattering portrayals of authors. It makes me wonder if he was getting in some digs at some authors he knows.
The bad guy's reasons for defrauding widows is so contrived that I cannot imagine it happening. Weirdly, it's not just about the money.
C.J. Box is clearly exploring some things. I follow him on a social media platform and he puts out some conflicting thoughts on modern life out there. This book does that as well, with commentary on mask mandates expressed by characters - Dewell's wonderful son is against wearing masks and a mentally ill author is obsessed with wearing them. Box also tosses in comments about pointless nature of a college degree but then has a character that makes a point of observing that he had made it out small town Montana and benefited from the expanded view of the world his education had given him.
This book had a definite rural/small town vs. urban vibe. True big city dwellers (NYC, Chicago, etc.) might be surprised that Montana has any urban scene in any sense in the whole state, but I am from small town Indiana and I can guarantee any reader that the rural vs. urban vibe is a thing all over the country.
In this case, the urban dwellers are predators on small town America, but small town America is depicted in a horrible light in this book.
There is also a strange argument between the values of "pull your own self up by your bootstraps" vs. strong unions and even praise for a socialist town government in Montana nearly 100 years ago to counter the power of rich urban elites.
****
This was a hit and miss book for me.
Cassie Dewell has always been C.J. Box's second series when compared to his work with Joe Pickett. There are fewer Dewell novels and they tend to have more extreme plot twists like deaths of main characters, career changes, moving to different states and more. This book at least offers some stability of keeping Dewell in the same career in the same state at the end of the book. I think the future health of the series is helped by the addition of a familiar character from the C.J. Box multiverse.
The story has some weird plot holes that don't stand up if the reader thinks about them very long afterwards. If the person who has hidden the treasure truly wants to stay hidden, why even tempt a trained investigator with a staff to help her who already has a proven track record of taking down a serial killer and a corrupt police department? He even provides a clue that leads straight to the author of the treasure poem.
Personally, I think this was an excuse for Box to introduce a bunch of author characters that Dewell interviews throughout the book. They are a diverse bunch and most are not very flattering portrayals of authors. It makes me wonder if he was getting in some digs at some authors he knows.
The bad guy's reasons for defrauding widows is so contrived that I cannot imagine it happening. Weirdly, it's not just about the money.
C.J. Box is clearly exploring some things. I follow him on a social media platform and he puts out some conflicting thoughts on modern life out there. This book does that as well, with commentary on mask mandates expressed by characters - Dewell's wonderful son is against wearing masks and a mentally ill author is obsessed with wearing them. Box also tosses in comments about pointless nature of a college degree but then has a character that makes a point of observing that he had made it out small town Montana and benefited from the expanded view of the world his education had given him.
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| Downtown Bozeman, Montana |
In this case, the urban dwellers are predators on small town America, but small town America is depicted in a horrible light in this book.
There is also a strange argument between the values of "pull your own self up by your bootstraps" vs. strong unions and even praise for a socialist town government in Montana nearly 100 years ago to counter the power of rich urban elites.
The reader was Christina Delaine. She is not my favorite reader - her tone is simply too disinterested for me. However, she is excellent at reading the spoken parts characters with issues, such as a character with a speech impediment and the crazed ramblings of a woman suffering from a decades-long case of PTSD after a gang rape while she was in high school. It's a glossed over plot point - almost like she was supposed to do something more in the story, but it was dropped. Too bad.
I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. This book can be found on Amazon.com here: TREASURE STATE: A CASSIE DEWELL NOVEL by C.J. Box.
I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. This book can be found on Amazon.com here: TREASURE STATE: A CASSIE DEWELL NOVEL by C.J. Box.
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