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.

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.

Downtown Bozeman, Montana

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.

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.

THE BITTERROOTS (Cassie Dewell #4) (audiobook) by C.J. Box

 

Published in 2019 by Macmillan Audio.

Read by Christian Delaine.

Duration: 9 hours, 49 minutes.
Unabridged.

In The Bitterroots, Cassie Dewell has left her career in law enforcement and is now a private investigator in Montana. This is perhaps the first series featuring a private investigator in Montana because there can't be that many private investigators in Montana. Box notes that she is actually doing quite well for herself because there are so few private investigators in Montana.

A lawyer who is also the daughter of a man she owed a favor to contacted her to do some investigating work. The attorney had been hired to defend a man who was accused of raping his niece. His case had been moved away from his home county due to pre-trial publicity and Cassie Dewell soon discovers that his home country. That county, despite being physically large, feels like small because everyone knows everyone else and one family runs everything through a combination of physical and financial intimidation.

The problem is that Dewell's client is a member of this family - the oldest son. He is the black sheep that moved away and made it big and came back home with a plan to sell the family ranch since the family patriarch is close to death. The will states that the oldest will inherit the whole ranch so long as he has never committed an act of moral turpitude - which is why the client says he was set up.

Dewell goes off to investigate expecting to find trouble and she finds even more than she expects...

I listened to The Bitterroots as an audiobook. Christian Delaine did a fantastic job of actually performing the book rather than simply reading it. She made the story better than it would have been if I had simply read it.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: The Bitterroots (Cassie Dewell #4) by C.J. Box.

PARADISE VALLEY: A NOVEL (Cassie Dewell #4) by C.J. Box

Published by Macmillan Audio in July of 2017
Read by Christina Delaine
Duration: 10 hours, 6 minutes
Unabridged

Cassie Dewell moved to North Dakota in her last book, one of the few experienced police officers in an oil boom town. In Paradise Valley the oil boom has mostly died down due to a drop of petroleum prices - but the town is still a much busier place than it was before the boom. The local sheriff is pondering retirement and wants Cassie Dewell to replace her.

But, Dewell has other goals - and one of them is the pursuit of the serial killer known as the Lizard King. He is a long haul trucker who specializes in killing truck stop prostitutes (known as "lot lizards", thus the serial killer's nickname). He was also part of a conspiracy that resulted in the death of her mentor and partner, Cody Hoyt and nearly killed her.

Dewell has a plan to capture this serial killer - a plan that is not officially on the books with the department. But, when the trap is finally sprung, things go sideways in ways that no one could have imagined and a kicks of a string of events that change everything...

This book was full of surprises. Christina Delaine, the reader of the audiobook, was one of them. She had to cover a wide variety of characters, including one with a strong Minnesota accent, a young man with a profound speech impediment, a bombastic old man and more. Excellent job.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Paradise Valley by C.J. Box.

BADLANDS: A NOVEL (Cassie Dewell #3) by C.J. Box

Published in July of 2015

Cassie Dewell was the lead character in 2013's The Highway, a gritty novel with a truly creepy bad guy. Dewell is a young widow who lives with her wacky mother and her son. Dewell makes the move from Wyoming to North Dakota in Badlands. This is a good move by all accounts - there is a substantial raise, a promotion in rank and it lets Dewell get out of a bad work situation detailed in The Highway.

A fracking operation in North Dakota.
Photo by Joshua Doubek.

Grimstad, North Dakota is in the center of the new oil boom. Thanks to "fracking",  it exploded from a little farm town to one of the fastest growing economic centers in the world. It has become the kind of town where anyone can get a job but no one can get a place to sleep and you have to wait for half an hour just to order at the local McDonald's.

The local sheriff has a problem. He knows that gangs are moving in to sell drugs and run prostitutes and he's pretty sure that one of his deputies is helping them. But, he can't be sure because he barely knows his police force. He's and old hand and so are a couple of his deputies but most of them have been hired from all over the country as the oil boom hit town.

On top of that, Dewell is involved in an ongoing investigation into the kidnappings, rapes and murders involving a long haul trucker from the last book. 

I thought this was a fascinating book. The reality of a modern oil boom town was simply fascinating. Cassie's ongoing pursuit of the Lizard King continues to add a sense of foreboding to the series.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Badlands: A Novel.

THE HIGHWAY (Cody Hoyt #2, Cassie Dewell #2) (audiobook) by C.J. Box

Published by Macmillan Audio in 2013
Read by Holter Graham
Duration: 9 hours, 53 minutes
Unabridged

If you are a big fan of the TV show Criminal Minds or the movie The Silence of the Lambs you will probably enjoy this book quite a bit. For me, the fascination of getting into the head of a serial killer has long since passed and I end up feeling soiled and abused after every excursion into this area. But, I read The Highway because I do enjoy C.J. Box's work quite a bit and I grudgingly like his Cody Hoyt character - he is exasperating and full of gigantic character flaws but just when you have had enough of him he pulls himself together and he gets the job done.

In a bit of a reach (actually, in a real big reach) the young female characters from his book Back of Beyond  are caught up in another dangerous situation and Cody Hoyt is called out to rescue them once again. This time they have a run-in with a long haul trucker that kills himself the Lizard King. This name is a reference to the disparaging nickname for truck stop prostitutes, Lot Lizards. He traps, abuses and then kills these women. No one suspects him because most of the women live life off of the grid and he is often in a completely different state before they are even missed.

Cody Hoyt has been suspended and soon-to-be-fired because his new partner, Cassie Dewell, has caught him planting evidence in a crime scene to frame a guilty man. The evidence he planted is not even used to prove the guilt of the suspect - it just caused further investigation that led to the actual evidence. Nonetheless, he is on his way out and he falls off of the wagon and starts and epic drinking binge. That is, until his son interrupts him and tells him about the two missing girls. Hoyt sobers up and heads out to find them with the off-the-books logistical support of his ex-partner.

But, things take a surprising turn...

So, this book was way too creepy for my tastes and makes me want to question my penchant for stopping at truck stops on vacations. But, I was truly surprised at the mid-point of the book by a bold direction taken by C.J. Box and I do like the focus on Cassie Dewell a lot.

The audiobook was read by Holter Graham who did an excellent job of portraying the voices of a wide variety of characters, male and female, of different ages and emotional states (from horror to nearly drunken stupor). 

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: The Highway

Link to my review of Back of Beyond