TROPHY HUNT (Joe Pickett #4) by C.J. Box

First published in 2004.

I am a serious fan of C.J. Box, having been introduced to him by a person who left a suggestion on one on my reviews on Amazon.com. Since then I have read most of his books in the order that I have found them - which is no order at all. So, this is probably my 15th or 16th book by C.J. Box but it is only now that I am getting around to #4 in the Joe Pickett series.

Trophy Hunt is a weird one.

If you like to watch "news of the weird" type of stuff than you are probably familiar of the urban legend about cattle mutilations. These stories suggest that aliens are picking up cattle, performing surgeries on them and then leaving their mutilated bodies scattered across the countryside.

In Trophy Hunt, farm animals and wild animals are being mutilated. Their faces and genitals are being cut away with precise cuts so Game Warden Joe Pickett knows that they are not the result of animal attacks - at least not anything he's used to. When men are killed and mutilated as well Joe is appointed to a task force but even Joe cannot seriously entertain the suggestion that alien spaceships are involved...

Despite the weirdness, it is always good to check in with Joe Pickett and his family. This is not the best in the series, but it has its moments. Those moments and these characters makes for a rating of 4 out of 5 stars.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Trophy Hunt.

VALLEY of DECEPTION: JAKE MATTHEWS, BOOK 1 (audiobook) by T.H. Michael

Published by Tobin H Michael in February of 2016
Read by Tom Lennon
Duration: 8 hours, 33 minutes
Unabridged

Valley of Deception is a thriller featuring Jake Matthews, an experienced U.S. Marshal who lives and works in Iowa.

The book starts out with a lot of action as Jake Matthews and his team are out to execute an arrest warrant in a small town in Iowa, accompanied by an inexperienced local deputy who is serving as the local guide. The arrest goes poorly and most of the team gets shot. 

Jake takes some much-needed time off with his wife to recover emotionally in his vacation home in Iowa. It is a farmhouse where Matthews can play at farming a bit and go hunting. But, this time for rest and relaxation is not going well - Matthews is experiencing panic attacks and having a hard time sleeping at night. 

Photo by DWD

One day, he decides to go on a walk along his property line when he smells the all-too-familiar smell (in his line of work) of a meth lab. He crosses onto a neighboring piece of property and soon finds the new, well-maintained meth lab. Plus, he sees the physically intimidating leader of a very private and mysterious local religious sect, Zebadiah Caldwell, walking away from the lab.

Matthews still does not feel steady enough yet to step in and arrest Caldwell so he decides to tell the local sheriff about the lab the next time that he goes to town. And, that's when things start to fall apart...

I listened to this book as an audiobook. The narrator, Tom Lennon did a great job with the voices. He had to create multiple characters, including men, women, a geeky pharmacist, a mildly mentally handicapped girl, a teenage boy and the accented, hyper-masculine voice of the religious sect. 

But, Lennon's outstanding work as a reader could not make up for an inconsistent book. 

Up to the point where I left off describing the action, I was more than pleased with this book. But, it just started to slip from that point. I thought that some of the characters started to act in an inconsistent manner which hurt the book. But, the biggest problem was that the book became repetitive.  I am fine with characters re-stating things so that the readers (or, in my case, listener) can be reminded of things as the story goes along. But, there were so many times when the sheriff's and Caldwell's internal thoughts were repeated in an attempt to create drama and underscore their motivations that I got tired of hearing them.

Too bad, because the first part of the book really did hold out a lot of promise but it just broke down.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: Valley of Deception.

Note: I was provided with a free digital copy of this audiobook so that I could provide an honest review.

WYNNE'S WAR by Aaron Gwyn

Published in 2014

Wynne's War is a war story and a western with a bit of A Few Good Men thrown in as well. It starts out in Iraq where Army Ranger Elijah Russell is filmed rescuing a horse during a firefight and becomes a YouTube sensation. Russell and his buddy are taken out of Iraq to a remote base in Afghanistan. Russell is tasked with training horses for a special forces unit to use against Taliban fighters. They want horses because they are quiet compared to any motorized vehicle, can go places where four-wheelers can't and never need to be re-fueled so long as there is available grass.

Russell grew up breaking horses and a great deal of the first third of the book is about Russell thinking about his childhood and detailing his "horse whisperer" style of breaking horses. 

The charismatic leader of this special forces unit, Captain Wynne, is a mystery and so is his real goal with these horses. Russell can't quite figure him out and when he and his buddy are drawn into their first real mission with the horses he just has a feeling that there is more to this mission than meets the eye and that is not good.

I enjoyed the "horse training" part of this book and I admire author Aaron Gwyn's ability to describe a firefight but, on the whole, I felt the book fell short. It left me with a lot more questions than answers and the ending was way too abrupt considering the time and care taken to even get to the heart of the story. I just felt like asking, "Is that it?"

I rate this book 3 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Wynne's War.

HARRY STARKE (Harry Starke #1) (audiobook) by Blair Howard

Audiobook edition published in November of 2015.
Published by Blair Howard.
Read by Tom Lennon.
Duration: 7 hours, 23 minutes.
Unabridged.

Harry Starke is a former cop turned private detective in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He has a successful agency with several associates with different skill sets. Harry is also connected to the Chattanooga political scene through his father, a federal judge.

Most importantly, Harry is connected through his connections as a former police officer. He knows a lot of cops, knows the department's habits and has a romantic relationship with an important detective. 

Most important, Harry is a smart, tough detective who can put two and two together, get four and figure out why that answer is important to the rest of the problem. Plus, he can shoot and fight well.

The Walnut Street Bridge in Chattanooga.

Harry is out for a late night drink and he notices a beautiful young lady. Later, while strolling across the Walnut Street Bridge he sees her running seemingly running away from someone and running towards him. She stops when she sees him and she jumps off of the bridge to her death. Harry wants to know what would make her do that for two reasons. He is simply curious and he feels guilty that she may have mistaken him for someone else and killed herself in a vain effort to escape.

The positives of the book:

-The setting. I love mysteries but way too many are set in New York or Los Angeles. Do they have crime in Chattanooga? Certainly. Let's explore some new territory. I spent some time in Chattanooga last summer and I enjoyed the fact that I was able to recognize some of the areas that the book mentioned.

-The audiobook narrator. Tom Lennon did a good job of giving his characters a soft Southern accent. He did a good job of creating multiple voices for these characters.

The negatives of this book:

-In some ways this book was a throwback to an earlier time when private detectives encountered one beautiful woman after another in the course of their investigations and slept with them all. I know that all fiction is fantasy, but this was more than a little ridiculous. The woman practically fell over themselves in an effort to take this man to bed.

-The mystery, once it was uncovered, was certainly a throwback idea. Almost something that you might find on an old episode of Columbo.

-Harry Starke talks too much. He talks in his head. He talks out loud. He just goes on and on and on. If you are reading a book you can skim but there is no such option when you are listening.

While not bad, I just did not enjoy this book. My 3 out of 5 star rating means that it was good, not great. If I were to grade it, I would give it a C+.

Note: I was provided with an audiobook copy of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Harry Starke #1.

YOU'VE GONE TOO FAR THIS TIME, SIR! (kindle) by Danny Bent

Published in August of 2014 by Danny bent, Ltd.

It took me a long time to read You've Gone Too Far This Time, Sir. I read it over the course of several months on my Kindle and on my phone's Kindle app. 

The book details the trip of a teacher from the UK who rides his bike from the UK to India in an effort to raise money for charity and to teach his kids something.

I really struggled with the first part of the book because the author seemed so self-absorbed and I never really understood how he was going to raise money for a charity by riding and as a fellow teacher I seriously did not get how this trip was going to do anything for his students besides show them that he could do this outrageous thing. 

So, I struggled through the first half of the book because I kept on coming back to the premise behind his trip and wondering about it (how is he raising this money? Is it by the kilometer? Is it a lump sum and will be donated so long as he makes a solid effort? These are the types of questions my overly-practical mind had).

But, after a couple of months of on and off again halfhearted efforts I basically forgot the school-related aspect of the book and read it as simply the adventures of a skinny Brit riding his bicycle to India because that's the kind of crazy thing that some Brits do from time to time. 

Basically, once Danny Bent enters Russia I thought the book became much more interesting and became more fascinating the further he went. It became a travelogue and a grand adventure and I was glad to go along because I know there is literally almost no chance that I will ever travel to these places and I will certainly not be staying in the places he stayed in. Heck, I have a hard time trying new things on the menu at McDonald's, let alone eating strange, steaming bowls of mystery stew handed to me by toothless old ladies in a hut on the side of a mountain in Pakistan.

But, thank goodness I can get a glimpse of that from adventurers like Danny Bent. The second half of the book is certainly worth your time to read.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: You've Gone Too Far This Time, Sir!

Bill O'Reilly's Legends and Lies: The Real West (audiobook) by David Fisher and Bill O'Reilly

Published in 2015 by Macmillan Audio
Read by Tom Wopat
Duration: 8 hours, 49 minutes
Unabridged

As of late, Bill O'Reilly has become quite the writer of history books. His "Killing..." series has garnered quite a bit of attention but Bill O'Reilly's Legends and Lies: The Real West is different than those. 

For one thing, it is not focused on the death of an historical figure. Also, this book was actually not written by O'Reilly. O'Reilly writes the introduction of the book and mentions that he used to talk about all of these historical figures and tell their true stories when he taught history in a classroom long ago. I can only assume that David Fisher and Bill O'Reilly sat down and discussed who to include in the book and the general tone of each entry.

The topics are as follows:

Billy the Kid (1859-1881)

-Daniel Boone;
-Davey Crocket;
-Kit Carson;
-Black Bart (Charles E. Bowles);
-Dime Novels and their influence on our perception of the Old West;
-Wild Bill Hickock;
-Boom Towns;
-Bass Reeves (an inspiration for the Lone Ranger story?);
-Custer and the Battle of Little Bighorn;
-Indian Summer;
-Buffalo Bill;
-Annie Oakley;
-The American Indian/Reservations;
-Jesse James;
-Doc Holiday / Wyatt Earp;
-The myth of the gunfight at high noon;
-Billy the Kid;
-Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid;
-Westerns on TV and movies.

Of course, as I listened I found some were more interesting than others. I enjoyed learning about Black Bart and I thought the Buffalo Bill entry was particularly interesting. My teenage daughter was particularly struck the by the nebulous nature of Billy the Kid. Was he a bad guy in a bad situation or was he a basically good kid forced into a bad situation? 

The Bass Reeves story was interesting but I do not believe that this African-American marshal was the inspiration for the Lone Ranger because the facts just do not line up. However, I would love to see Bass Reeves explored further on his own just because he is interesting all by himself.

There are some facts that just do not fit together well. It is bound to happen. This is a written by a generalist writer who specializes in ghost-writing, not in history and a former history teacher turned journalist. But, almost all of it is accurate and this book certainly does well as an introduction to the fascinating time period known as the Old West.

Tom Wopat reads the audiobook. I had no idea that the actor most famous for portraying Luke Duke on the Dukes of Hazzard read audiobooks. He was not bad. He had a nice way of giving a voice to each person when he read a direct quote. Unfortunately, they all sounded like a grizzled growl. He must not have been too bad - I blew right through this audiobook.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: Legends and Lies: The Real West.

THE ASSAULT (RECON TEAM ANGEL #1) by Brian Falkner

Published in September of 2013

The Assault (Recon Team Angel #1) is the first in a series of books about teenage human soldiers used to infiltrate the ranks of alien invaders of Earth through secret missions.

The premise is that a group of aliens called Bzadians arrived at Earth and settled in the Australian Outback because it was most like their home. Their ships had no propulsion systems to let them take back off of Earth and humanity was persuaded to let them settle in Australia.

But, it turns out that these original ships were the advance force for a full-fledged invasion. Australia became their stronghold and the from their the Bzadians invaded Asia, Africa and Europe. Now, only the Americas hold them off. 

Because of the slight, short stature of the Bzadians, human teenagers have been recruited to undergo plastic surgery and go behind enemy lines to gather intelligence and, if possible, actually do some damage.

In this book, the target is the massive rock formation known as Uluru or Ayers Rock. The aliens have been building around it and through it the entire time and clearly have a lot invested there. Recon Team Angel is supposed to secretly "parachute" into the Outback, hike to Uluru, blend in with the aliens,  check out what is going on and, if possible, deal with it.

But, immediately there is a problem when the team leader barely survives his insertion into the Outback thanks to someone tampering with his equipment. Which means that one of his team must be a traitor...

This is a solid action-based science fiction story. It is long on adventure but it does manage to work in some character development as well. It even goes so far as to give the point of view of some of the alien soldiers to add a little complexity and depth to the story. The strength of the story is action and there certainly was plenty of that and it was well done.

I rate this YA novel 4 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: The Assault (Recon Team Angel #1)