Another great book in the Joe Pickett series! He does a great job with the characterization and suspense with every title he adds. I forgot to review this one after I read it and forget some of the specific details to this one, but I haven't met a CJ Box book I haven't enjoyed!

Storm Watch is the 23rd book in the Joe Pickett series , And another great edition. I love this series, the books never disappoint or let you down. In Storm Watch Joe is tracking a wounded elk during a snow storm, when he finds the frozen and mutilated body of an University of Wyoming professor. In another part of Wyoming Nate Romanowski it trying g to rebuild his falconry company. I live in northern Colorado So I'm very familiar with the land and towns in this book. I highly recommend this book and series.

This was a great book. I loved every paragraph, every sentence and every word of this masterpiece! I read it in 12 hours, which is a lot for me to do! It had everything and more laid out in the novel! I sure hope There is more to come from this author! I am totally hooked!

CJ Box writes a wonderful series, about Joe Pickett, a Wyoming Game Warden.
Storm Watch is book #23.
In this “episode”, Joe stumbles onto a conspiracy involving illegal antler harvesting, and radical, fascist, conspiracy groups planning a government takeover over!
As always, Joe and his friend Nate, work together to save the day!
Box’s books are always relevant, adding in politics, and bit coin mining in this book. As usual, massive snow storms play a large roll as well.
This was a 4.5 star book, that I highly recommend.
Thank you NetGalley and
Putnam books for the opportunity to read and review this book.

This C.J. Box series is one of my all time favorites. Joe is always a humble underrated character who usually comes out on top. Luckily is this installment they stayed away from Nate’s falcon yarak nonsense that is usually played up too much in earlier books. Box is the best author in this genre.

Storm watch is the 23rd Joe Picket story and I have loved them all. This one was another fun ride with a timely subject. I can't say anything bad about it. Always waiting for the next installment.

C.J. Box never disappoints. Storm Watch opens with a hectic day responding to calls as a blizzard is heading their way. Joe Pickett is up in the mountains with Daisy the dog, tracking wounded Elk when he sees something odd on a new building standing in a remote spot of a ranch. A body. The response to this when he reports it is lukewarm and the snow is coming in so Joe takes pictures and makes for home. There follows a tale of a group of guys in town, former pipeline workers with a criminal bent and a serious problem with the federal government's impact on their lives and livelihood, all willing to earn money illegally and looking for a way to make a big statement politically. Box does a great job putting together a motley group of characters, some state, federal and local government folks and law enforcers on who knows what side of the law and Joe, Nate, Geronimo, Marybeth, Sheridan and other players on the clear side of good. There's lots of time in nature in the winter in Wyoming and lots of intrigue, multiple murders and lots of self-defense. An entertaining novel throughout.

Game Warden Joe Pickett is tracking a wounded elk into the mountains. A massive snow storm is just about to hit so he needs to find it quickly so he can get back to his truck and home before getting stuck. Just his luck, then, to discover a building in the middle of nowhere that he's never seen before. A building with massive, industrial fans. With a body that's been partially shoved into one of the massive fans. And when he gets in for a closer look, someone takes a shot at him from the woods.

Pickett can't safely get the body out of the woods because of the storm, but does what he can to come back and investigate later. But when the sheriff's office arrives after the storm, the body is missing, and when Pickett starts his investigation, he finds that no one seems to want him to look into the matter - not the extreme environmentalists in the territory, not the Federal agents who show up, and not even the state governor. Which of course makes Pickett want to dig in even more.

This is the 23rd book in the Joe Pickett series and like most, if not all, the previous books, this is bound to go straight on to the bestseller list. I've only read a couple of the Pickett novels, as well as a couple of the Cassie Dewell series (which I quite enjoy) and I really found this to be a bit dull.

The stakes are high - we've got federal agents, high level government personnel, and foreign powers all in the mix along with more local concerns such as illegal antler collecting, and yet there is so little actually happening beyond information gathering and a sudden resolution. The appearance of a former governor is almost a deus ex machina mechanism to resolve the problem suddenly and swiftly.
As an action/thriller, this is a no. As a modern western, this is a hesitant maybe (the antler stealing is an interesting storyline). As a mystery, this is a shrug of the shoulder, "Eh." Basically, if this wasn't a book by C. J. Box and part of a bestselling series, this would have absolutely no traction.

Looking for a good book? Storm Watch is the 23rd book in the Joe Pickett series by C. J. Box. It is formulaic - which, under the right circumstance could work really well, but this one happens to go through the paces routinely and dully. Recommended only for ardent C.J. Box/Joe Pickett fans. I'd rather read Box's next Cassie Dewell book.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

Action packed from the first page, Joe Pickett is on the search for a wounded elk while a blizzard is coming in fast, in the process he discovers the dead body of a professor at one of the universities. Who would want to kill the professor and who wants to cover it up, With a lot of help from his family and friends, Joe discovers the truth that could get him killed. Full of plot twist and turns, action, mystery, suspense, and edge of your seat excitement. A great addition to the Joe Pickett series. There is some foul language but overall a clean read. I read this in one afternoon.

When C.J. Box writes, I read. If you had told me I would read 22 books about a game warden in Wyoming, I would have laughed at you. But here I am having finished the 23rd book in the series. I anticipate the release date of each book with more eagerness each year. Box keeps the stories unique and allows the characters to grow and change. Each story stands on its own and tackles a relevant topic such as environmental issues, extremists, political oppression, endangered animals, etc. It’s great to read a series that isn’t the same basic story retold with a few name, job, or geographic location changes.
Storm Watch has Joe searching for a wounded elk when he finds a dead body. Never good. The story brings the FBI, politics (consistent with story content), and China into the picture with believable events involving cryptocurrency and hidden data sites in the wilds of Wyoming. Nate is rebuilding his business and has employed Joe’s daughter, Sheridan, to help. I love how Sheridan is coming into her own in the series. Together with Joe’s wife, Marybeth, and her keen research skills and some help from Geronimo, they solve the murder and so much more.

By the way, if you love the books, you’ll love the new TV series. Season two is out now on Paramount+.

#joepickett #stormwatch #cjbox novels #cjboxauthor #wyoming #netgalley #penguingroup #penguingroupputnam #gpputnamsons

This was a hard read and lacked a thrill that the author has done in the past. There was some parts that were hard to get through and I ended up not finish the book. I do like the author and would try more in the series

Joe Pickett is hunting a wounded Elk and, after getting permission to cross private land, manages to find the Elk, but also finds a building where one shouldn't be and a mutilated body. He'd seen an abandoned car while searching for the Elk. A storm was coming—actually it started so he made sure the body was safe and took the ID from the victim's pocket. That was when two people up on the ridge fired shots at him.

Joe reported the death and the building to the owner of the land, then his area office, and the police. The ID matched a missing University of Wyoming professor. Pickett was told to drop the case but, by then, he'd learned enough to know someone was trying to bury all the evidence and making it all disappear.

Being the kind of person who can't let it go when he feels people are not doing their jobs, Joe continues to gather evidence. Meanwhile, an upsurge of problems with sovereign citizen groups is spreading throughout the rural areas of the state. There are also a number of anonymous-looking buildings housing top-of-the-line computer equipment and industrial cooling systems—used for crypto mining which is a new money-making venture and usually untraceable.

You would think that this issue would be taken care of but the orders to squash the investigation are coming from very high up the command chain and the danger is not just to Joe Pickett but to his wife, children, and close friends. He puts together a small experienced group he can trust and they work together to get to the source of the problems.

Things get very tense--thriller/suspense tense--with enough twists and misdirection to fill the pages with action, danger, and fear for the lives of these characters.

On the con side, the political subplot was germane, but so blatant that it was quite off-putting, although the main-line plot was compelling enough to keep me reading.

Typical CJ Box—top notch, fully engaging characters and plot. The characters really develop nicely from book to book and as a fan since Book 1, I wait every year to see what is next!


5 stars yet again!

Awesome action suspense! Loved the characters and the setting, leaves you guessing til the end! Add in a little espionage and mystery and you can't help but root for the good guys!

I love me some Joe Pickett! If you haven’t read any of these I highly suggest starting from the beginning of the series. It gives a lot of back story and you can enjoy the evolution of the characters. Thanks to the publisher and netgalley for this copy for review

Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons on February 28, 2023

Storm Watch could have been titled Red Meat. I mean, you’ve got the Chinese Communist Party. You’ve got climate change denialism and complaints about mask mandates. You’ve got “Silicon Valley activists and the Hollywood elite” who see Wyoming libertarians as a threat to their way of life. You’ve got “coastal elites” who want to “shut down our energy industry, our cattle ranches, our timber industry, and just about every part of our American way of life. They’ve never owned a gun, gone to church, or served in the military.” You’ve got “Washington D.C. elites” who eliminated the “legitimate livelihoods” of Keystone pipeline workers. You’ve got complaints about the “deep state,” electric cars, and “children being indoctrinated and corrupted in their schools by unscrupulous teachers and administrators who preached gender fluidity and taught critical race theory.” You’ve got hysterical claims that “they’re coming for our guns.” You’ve got the FBI at the vanguard of a war against conservatives. You’ve got the phrases “domestic terrorists” and “insurrection” appearing in quotation marks to signal a disbelief that the phrases represent reality.

To be fair, the protagonist of this series, Joe Pickett, does not personally embrace any of this nonsense. Neither does Joe denounce it. Joe is studiously free from opinions. At least, he feels no need to express any opinions that don’t relate to his job as a game warden, western apparel, his mother-in-law, or his daughters’ boyfriends. Nate Romanowski, the supporting character whose role is to represent paranoid members of the far right, nods approvingly at many of the rants, giving far right readership a reason to keep coming back to the series. Nate is one of theirs.

Nate complains that the Secretary of the Interior makes decisions that benefit the entire nation, not just Wyoming. He also complains that public lands exist mostly in the West. Yeah, but that’s not a red/blue issue. The state with the most federally owned land is a blue state (Nevada), and the percentage of federal ownership in California is about the same as it is in Wyoming. Federal land ownership isn’t some conspiracy that targets red states, but fact-checking is noticeably absent in Storm Watch.

Joe and Nate both recognize that many of the people who embrace these views are losers and meth addicts. One of their apologists argues that they are “men whose dignity has been taken from them” because they lost their pipeline jobs. Mind you, the Keystone pipeline might have created three dozen permanent jobs across the entire nation. Some welders and pipefitters lost the opportunity for temporary employment on a specific project, but they didn’t lose actual jobs because the permits that were granted and quickly revoked never took effect. If you lose your dignity because you didn’t get a job that never existed, it seems to me you’re looking for an excuse to explain your meth addiction.

So put the red meat aside and what have you got? Joe is tracking an elk that was injured in a car accident. He finds a building with noisy air conditioning in the middle of winter, which strikes him as odd. Then he finds a dead body hanging out of a window in the building. The dead guy is a professor at Wyoming’s only university. Joe later learns that the professor is suspected of being a Chinese spy (because he’s Chinese) despite the utter absence of anything worth spying on in Wyoming, much less at a public university where academic projects aren’t national secrets. The building that puzzles Joe houses computers that are engaged in cryptocurrency mining. Joe also chases snowmobilers who are harassing elk in the hope that their antlers will fall off in advance of the season when it is legal to collect fallen antlers. The snowmobilers have something to do with the dead professor. All of this relates to dual threats to the current Republican governor’s upcoming reelection campaign: one by a fringe group of far right snowmobiling meth addicts and the second by the former Democratic governor, who has a distaste for the current governor’s coziness with the Chinese Communist Party.

The key villain, a paranoid nutcase named Jason Demo, believes that real Americans own guns, go to church, drive a pickup, and shop at Walmart. He’s confident that elites (meaning people who don’t drive pickups, shop at Walmart, etc.) have declared war on the West, the West being where real Americans live, except for the ones on the West Coast and those who don’t drive pickups, shop at Walmart, etc. Demo rants about high unemployment (apparently he doesn’t read the news) and complains that there isn’t enough mining and oil drilling on federal land (again, a belief not driven by actual facts). He believes that environmental concerns keep us from being energy independent, a point of view that’s pretty funny, given the number of times this series has lectured about the evils of wind energy. Demo is ready to make a stand via insurgency, apparently failing to notice how well the last insurgency went. That happens when you don’t read the news.

This isn’t a bad story if you don't take the red meat seriously, including the notion that “rogue” FBI agents created an extremist group so they could arrest domestic terrorists of their own invention. Yeah, whatever. And if you ignore the governor’s collusion with the Chinese. He might have had something to do with the spy balloon over Montana, although the book was written before the balloon was detected. The story moves quickly and I thought it was entertaining, perhaps because it is so farcical.

As usual, Joe doesn’t do much of anything, apart from getting stuck in the snow and fretting that a boy (even a churchgoing boy who wears the correct western gear) might get into his daughter’s jeans. There’s not much chance of that happening. Nate and his friend Geronimo take care of the necessary killing so that Joe can keep his hands clean. The novel proves again that the person with the biggest gun wins (Nate is proud of having one of the world’s biggest handguns, while Geronimo has a shotgun with not one, not two, but three barrels).

In its early days, before C.J. Box made such an obvious attempt to appeal to a far right readership by giving a voice to their silly grievances, the Joe Pickett series was much better. While Box has never been much of a prose stylist, he does capture the beauty that Wyoming residents find its their desolate environment. Box’s best work is the apolitical Blue Heaven, a novel that proves Box can mine the setting of unpopulated western states for good atmosphere and craft sound plots if he stays away from politics.

The Pickett novels have always characterized environmentalists as extremists, so I am heartened by the half-hearted effort to recognize that people on the far right take extreme and dangerous action, even if they must be goaded to do so by rogue FBI agents. Box is careful not to make Pickett the voice of extremism, which is this novel’s saving grace. Still, I get the sense that Box is trying to straddle a line by appealing to an audience with politically extreme views without expressly endorsing them.

There is barely enough good storytelling in Storm Watch to overcome the neutral presentation of far right talking points, but the novel advances too many unchallenged lies for me to recommend it without reservations. I suppose this would be a good book for fact-challenged readers who might enjoy chewing a healthy serving of red meat, but it’s also a good read for rational readers who enjoy laughing at far right fantasies.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

CJ Box is one of my favorite authors. Storm Watch is the next in the series about Joe Pickett, a game warden in Wyoming. Joe always follows his conscience, even when it gets him in trouble with his superiors. There is a storm bearing down on Saddlestring Wyoming. Joe is searching for a wounded elk. He wants to find an put the elk out of its misery before the animal suffers a painful death. But, Joe comes across a dead body while searching for the elk. He is also dealing with antler poachers and a possible siege by a group of militants. When Joe enlists the help of his wife, daughter and close friends to tie everything together and even to help oust a crooked governor. CJ Box books always have some blood and gore in them. I feel like this book contains the gore but isn’t as descriptive as other books.

Once again C.J. Box delivers a page-turning, Joe Pickett novel. I love these books because from the first line you know you are in for a wild ride.

Thank you @putnambooks and @netgalley for my digital eArc. My thoughts are my own.

C. J. Box’s Joe Pickett series is one of my favorite series and I have been following the antics and mysteries of Joe Pickett and his family for years. This is book 23 in the series. You can read it as a stand-alone, but then you will want to start at book one and binge-read the entire series! It is that good!

While investigating a wounded elk during an approaching snowstorm, Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett makes a startling discovery – a frozen (mutilated) dead body! He immediately reports it, but when authorities come to investigate, the body has disappeared! As he tries to learn more, he is blocked by federal agents and the governor. Joe stubbornly keeps investigating and soon uncovers much more than he bargained for! As usual, Joe enlists the help of his librarian wife, Mary Beth, and his extremist friend, Nate. Soon Joe discovers more dead bodies and the action (involving Bitcoin, extremists, cover-ups, and shady politicians) continues right up to the last minute. I really wondered how Joe was going to get out of a deadly situation this time!

My Thoughts: It always amazes me when an author can keep a character fresh and the story so engaging, with so many books in the series, but C.J. Box does just that! This book debuted  at #1 on the New York Times Bestseller List for Hardcover and eBook fiction! Joe Pickett is a lovable character, full of flaws, but always determined to do what is right! Over the years, Joe and Mary Beth have extended their family and readers have watched their girls grow up. Each mystery, including Storm Watch, is totally engaging, fast-paced, dangerous, and deadly for many involved.

Read this if you enjoy:
*Gory murders in the outdoors

*Intricate Plots
*
Well-developed, loveable characters

*Books in a series

Another entry in the Joe Pickett series, this does not disappoint. Now that the girls are grown and gone, Game Warden Joe and his wife Marybeth finally have a good-sized house. But Lucy is in college, April has a job and home elsewhere, and Sheridan is working for falcon master and family friend, Nate Romanowski. Searching for a wounded animal in a blizzard, Joe finds a body. After the storm, Joe goes back to the body’s location, a warehouse full of some type of machinery on a lonely ranch, only to find the building empty and the body of the dead professor is gone. Never having a good relationship with the local sheriff, Joe is stymied by the incident and even more so when the feds advise him to back off.

Nate is being recruited for a local militant group while trying to raise money through crypto mining with the help of visiting fellow falconer Geronimo Jones. Nate is trying to walk the line and find his own path. Joe is trying to solve the mystery and do his job. The ventures intercede and Joe’s mother-in-law even makes an appearance to stir up trouble for him. If you’re a fan of Joe Pickett, don’t miss this one.

Recommended for long time C.J. Box readers, new fans of the TV series, and everyone who enjoys a good mystery. Box’s modern day westerns are thrilling yet comforting reads.