Open Season [Import] [Hardcover]

C.J. Box (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 242 pages
• Publisher: Robert Hale Ltd (2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0709073208
• ISBN-13: 978-0709073208
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.8 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (97 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #305,029 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

C. J. Box is the author of the award-winning Joe Pickett series of novels, including Open Season (2001), Savage Run (2002), Winterkill (2003), Trophy Hunt (2004), Out of Range (2005) and the upcoming In Plain Sight (May, 2006). He's the winner of the Anthony Award, Prix Calibre 38 Award (France), the Macavity Award, the Gumshoe Award, the Barry Award, and an Edgar Award and L.A. Times Book Prize finalist. Open Season was a New York Times Notable Book and three of the novels have been Booksense 76 picks.


The novels have been national bestsellers and have been translated into 12 languages.


Box is a Wyoming native and has worked as a ranch hand, surveyor, fishing guide, a small town newspaper reporter and editor, and he co-owns an international tourism marketing firm with his wife, Laurie. An avid outdoorsman, Box has hunted, fished, hiked, ridden, and skied throughout Wyoming and the Mountain West. He serves on the Board of Directors for the Cheyenne Frontier Days Rodeo.


Box lives with his family outside of Cheyenne, Wyoming.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

53 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Exciting mystery debut, July 6, 2001

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Open Season (A Joe Pickett Novel) (Hardcover)

While still a Wyoming state game warden trainee, Joe Pickett ticketed a man fishing without a license. The man turned out to be the state governor. One week after being assigned to Twelve Sleep County, Joe fines outfitter Ote Keeley for shooting a buck out of season. However, Ote takes Joe's gun away and points it at the game warden's head before calmly accepting his ticket. Though he continues working hard, Joe has never fully recovered from the Keeley incident.

A few months later, Keeley reenters Joe's life when his daughter finds the outfitter dead at the woodpile near the Pickett home. Next to the corpse is a cooler containing pellets of excrement. Joe and fellow warden Wacey Hedeman assist sheriff Bud Barnum with the investigation. However, soon Joe is in trouble with his superiors, his pregnant wife for jeopardizing his job, and with a killer trying to add a nosy game warden to the list.

OPEN SEASON is an entertaining police procedural tale that works because the author steps out of the box by insuring his star is not superman. Instead he is just an average Joe struggling with learning his new job, obtaining a decent standard of living for his family, and still trying to do the right thing. The story line is filled with twists and turns so that the audience into thinking h wrong person is the villain. The endangered species issue is well designed within the plot with C.J. Box cleverly laying it out so that the reader can decide on this complex question. Fans will want more Wyoming mysteries starring a guy named Joe.

Harriet Klausner

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Learn the name: C.J. Box, July 31, 2001

By 

J.T. MacAllister (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Open Season (A Joe Pickett Novel) (Hardcover)

There are so many things about C.J. Box's debut mystery that make it one of the best mysteries I have read, and hands-down the best first novel I've experienced in ANY genre. There is the moral compass and humanity of its protagonist, Joe Pickett: the Wyoming game warden as straight as he is flawed, the vivid descriptions of the wilds of Wyoming, the navigation of the story line as it twists through several shades of gray and the exquisite treatment of Sheridan, a child character as well-written as they come. When the poacher who held up Pickett with his own gun winds up dead on his backyard woodpile, Joe is puzzled by the poacher's choice of resting place and has no idea the significance of the cooler found next to him. This is Picketts introduction to a world of corporate exploitation, political angling and the threats against his family and his passion that drums up the stakes with every page turned. At times clumsy, always well-meaning and ultimately heroic in spite of his limitations, Joe is humanized in a way that preserves the nobility of the pure protagonist and makes us wish we could be as right when we were wrong. Box is an author who has stepped into the genre with a clean, fast and remarkably adept first novel. Keep an eye on C.J. Box. ....

29 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Spotlight on Wyoming, February 26, 2002

By 

sweetmolly (RICHMOND, VA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Open Season (A Joe Pickett Novel) (Hardcover)

Dare I say "different" when speaking of a mystery/thriller? Just when I think I have seen every possible setting, hero/anti-hero, cozy, hard-boiled, police procedural out there; along comes "Open Season" with something new and fresh. Joe Pickett is as nice as they come, but prone to embarrassing errors. His family plays a starring role, not only with him but also as an integral part of the story. His wife and two daughters don't play cute characters or trite supporting roles; there would be no story without them.

Edgar-nominated, Mr. Box's debut novel is set in a Wyoming that could only be written by a native. Someone said a writer should write what he knows about; Mr. Box has followed the advice. He makes Wyoming so real, you can smell the air and feel the forest. He is also honest enough to admit all parts of Wyoming are not nature's paradise, but strikingly ugly. He understands and depicts the particular politics that are unique to small or under-populated states. When almost everyone is on a first name basis with the governor, everyone is in on some kind of a deal or another.

Joe is particularly shocked and offended when a body is found on his backyard woodpile. When three other bodies are found at the victim's outfitters camp, the case is closed quickly and neatly as a falling out among the four of them. Joe is not satisfied, no one is quite who they seem to be, and corruption at every level is gradually exposed. The closer Joe comes to a solution, the more his family is endangered until tension is at the snapping point.

"Open Season" has an agenda: the Endangered Species Act and is it a well thought out piece of legislation. Mr. Box thinks not, and whatever the reader believes, the book will give them something to consider. The characterizations are excellent; I was surprised at how much I cared. "Open Season" has my vote for the best mystery of the year.