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 tha