Badlands (Highway Quartet)

I have read all of the C.J. Box books and have especially enjoyed the Joe Pickett series. But BADLANDS, which follows after BACK OF BEYOND and THE HIGHWAY, brings us back to Cassie Dewell and I like her.

A little overweight, 36 years old, a mom, and a darn good police officer, Cassie leaves Montana, where she was unappreciated and is now the Chief Investigator on the Bakken County Sheriff's Department based out of Grimstad, North Dakota.

Grimstad is a BOOMING oil town. The details given on the oil industry by author Box were fascinating. To go from a sleepy, dying small town to a population of over 60,000 practically overnight causes all kinds of problems, especially for law enforcement.

Not only is Cassie tracking down drug lowlife but serial killer Lizard King introduced in THE HIGHWAY is still very much on Cassie's radar.

Box describes the places he writes about so well. I always feel like I would recognize those places immediately if I ever saw them. I felt the same about Grimstad. And he described the biting cold very well too - I needed to put a sweatshirt on partway through the book.

Characters are fully described - good guys and bad. The storyline is exciting, full of new info (at least to me), and is a great continuation of this latest series.

This was the first C.J. Box novel I have read, although I have been aware of his reputation as an excellent (and award-winning) author for some time. When I saw that he was releasing this stand-alone novel (at least billed as such), I thought this was a good time to see if he had the moxie that readers claimed. The answer? Yes, he does. I was immediately attracted to the setting of the novel...the Badlands of North Dakota are an area I'm a bit familiar with, just enough to know it's a perfect setting for the novel he was writing here. As much as I was also pleased with our protagonist, police deputy Cassie Dewell (slightly frumpy, lacking self-confidence, smart lady and that sealed the deal for me - I love her), it was immediately obvious that Dewell was a recurring character from a previous novel, as was the criminal she was out to get in the beginning chapters. Not exactly my definition of a stand-alone novel and I knocked of a darned star for that. This was clearly a continuation of Box's last "non-series" novel which - convolutedly - makes *this* a series. Clear as mud? Gah. I hate it when the marketing department of publishers pull this kind of shenanigans, because it meant I had to go back and purchase the previous novel that featured Cassie to be caught up. To be fair, one could figure out what happened by reading Badlands as the backstory is filled in, but for those readers who don't like that sort of thing I just wanted to throw out that warning.

As to the rest of Badlands....it is an excellent story once we get past the wrap-up of the previous book's plot and Cassie accepts employment in Grimstad, North Dakota - in the Badlands. The setting is as much a character in the story as any person is - Box is that good with his setting. It takes on a personality of it's own and if you've ever been there, you'll know that to be true. Anyway, Cassie is dealing with a crime committed, corrupt police, and a young child witness. It's quite well done. Box deserves the praise thrown his way and I can see I'm going to have to read his well-received series now.

Do I recommend the book? Well, yes...but I'm going to recommend you read The Highway (the previous Cassie Dewell book that introduced her) first, then read this one. I've read them both now and it's worth reading them in order. Badlands could be read alone, but why cheat yourself?

I hate reading books out of order and I hate being lied to.

I love finding an author who has written a series of novels with a central, continuing character…John Sanford, Michael Connelly, Robert Crais, Lee Child, Stephen Hunter, James Lee Burke, Craig Johnson, William Kent Krueger, and most recently, Archer Mayor. C. J. Box is another, of course, and I’ve read all the Joe Pickett novels.

Jumping in the middle of a series is confusing and can ruin the earlier books by referring to events in those not yet read, so when I find a new author, I immediately make a list of all the books in order. Badlands is billed as a stand alone novel. It’s not. I was well into reading it before I realized references to prior characters and plotlines weren’t just background – they were to previous books in a series. I closed the book, not wanting to go any further, and annoyed because I’d come across “spoilers” that told me the fate of major characters in the first two.

That’s pet peeve number one. I then went back to find the first two books and lo and behold, not only had I already bought them, but they were billed as Joe Pickett novels, which they most certainly are NOT. So not only was I lied to, but I no longer had the anticipation of enjoying two more books with Joe Pickett.

That’s pet peeve number two.

As for Badlands itself, I have trouble finding a character I like and want to root for. After reading a third of the book, Cassie Dewell comes across as a dumpy, easily embarrassed woman with frizzy hair, Kyle is a naïve accident waiting to happen, and the rest are violent, vicious sociopathic caricatures, committing horrendous acts of torture in a town that makes Deadwood look idyllic.

Since I already have the first two in the series, I’ll go back to the beginning and see if more background on Cassie and the storyline can change my opinion, though I can’t say I’m overly optimistic. I’m kind of tempted to go back where I was, happily traveling with Joe Gunther in Brattleboro Vermont. Thank you, Archer Mayor. And C.J., please get back to Wyoming and look up Joe Pickett!

Spoiler alert...do not proceed if you wish to read the book. I am a Wyoming guy and big CJ Box fan. This is his most disappointing effort to date. A very contrived, overly violent plot (and I do not generally mind well-written violence). The main character frequently exhibits major errors in judgment (you put a mentally-challenged kid in a deadly situation and you do not check him for weapons? Come on! And then apparently no ill psychological effects after participating in and witnessing several brutal acts? A very shallow effort from the guy who created the originally great character of Joe Pickett.

Not the best of CJ Box's books - I missed Joe Pickett. The story is a bit lame but the book is educational for sure.. if you want to get a feel for what it is like to live and work in fracking country, or know what it is like to live in extreme cold, read this book. It's not very believable - no 12 year-old special needs kid could deliver newspapers on a bluff, on a bike in minus 30 degree weather - uphill! I love CJ Box's books but felt a bit tricked by this one - thought we would find the serial trucker killer but it was just a set-up for the next book. Not fair to your loyal fans.

Some may consider this a spoiler, but I don't. I consider it fair warning. The first roughly 10 percent of this book (It's been a month since I read it, so can't remember exactly) is a big misdirection that is never resolved. Worse yet, it's turned into a cliff hanger at the end. So, if you want to know what develops out of this tense situation, you should ... keep reading? No. You should buy the next book. The bulk of the book has nothing to do with the beginning or the end. What do you make of that?

This seem downright dishonest. I've been reading C.J. Box since the first Joe Pickett novel and have been a big supporter. I've read every one of his Pickett books and his stand-alones. I'm done, at least for a while.

Jim

Cassie Dewell, the competent female investigator in BADLANDS, reminds me a lot of the superb female sheriff in the movie "Fargo". Cassie is the widowed mother of a young son, and shows compassion for the people she encounters in her job. She's not your stereotypical hard-bitten female detective--she works her cases methodically (tracking the "Lizard King" truck driver who's a serial killer; and figuring out who's behind the recent torture-murders of two North Dakota motorcycle gang members), and she gets her good results both by following her own good instincts and by applying sound police procedure.

Cassie is a third-generation Montanan, who is relocating with her son and mother to a North Dakota boomtown (Grimstad, Bakken County). Oil shale abounds in Bakken County, and the oil is being extracted and shipped out by rail in enormous quantities, thanks to the new hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") techniques. A sudden influx of oil-field workers (county population of men to women estimated at 20 to 1) has resulted in increased crime, particularly in crime related to drug-trafficking, and has forced a rapid expansion of the local Sheriff's Department. This is why Cassie's new boss (Sheriff Kirkbride) is able to offer Cassie a lead investigator's job at a salary of $80,000 a year plus benefits and housing. Cassie's job is complicated, of course, by her being the only female in the entire sheriff's department, except for the long-time dispatcher and office manager (Judy Banister).

Much of the BADLANDS story is told through the eyes of a 12-year-old boy (Kyle Westergaard) who delivers newspapers by bicycle. But Kyle isn't your stereotypical newsboy (the kind the average novelist brings in to observe things useful to furthering the plot because newsboys are generally "invisible"). Kyle is developmentally disabled (fetal alcohol syndrome). He's an intelligent kid with interesting thoughts and motives, who talks very little because almost no one can understand what he's saying, and who takes his truly terrible home life for granted. Kyle's mother's boyfriend (T-Lock) is a chronic layabout, who has big but dangerous ideas about what to do with a bundle of drugs and cash that Kyle finds and brings home. There are other well-developed characters, including a couple of Salvadorean bad guys who would give anyone nightmares.

As a thriller, BADLANDS delivers. It's a page-turner, and a very fast read. There's lots of action related to multiple gruesome murders, and there's an intricate plot with many disparate threads that are tied up properly at the end. (Although the novel includes descriptions of dismemberment and torture murders, the author handles the descriptions in a way that shouldn't turn off the average thriller fan.) The bitterly cold North Dakota winter locale is so well described, it's almost a character in itself. I'm definitely looking forward to reading the next Chief Inspector Cassie Dewell book.

I've read all of Box's books. This is his poorest effort. Thin plot, poorly developed characters, and the ending seen since the first pages. In spite of that I do enjoy Box's western scenes.

My husband has just finished the book and said to me, "Don't read it, it is to dirty. I am disappointed because i have enjoyed all the Joe Pickett books.

Warning: this is NOT a Joe Pickett novel. I assumed that it was, simply because I'm more used to the Pickett novels.

This is a sequel to The Highway, which was listed as NS (non series) but, apparently, is not.

SPOILERS HERE IF YOU HAVEN'T READ "THE HIGHWAY"

If you'd asked me before I read this, I would have said a sequel was a bad thing. I thought The Highway was a good story but it was WAY too creepy for my tastes, the kind of thing that gives you nightmares. And, while this book does pick up with Cassie Dewell being called upon to identify the Lizard King, the villain from that previous book, the remainder of the story takes a completely new turn, with Cassie taking a job in a North Dakota oil boomtown. Investigating what appear to be related murders, the sheriff in Cassie's new department suspects corruption in his ranks, and hires Cassie to come in to resolve both situations.

Box has evidently done extensive homework on the bizarre environment of the North Dakota fracking oil production, where landowners routinely go from broke the millionaire and where the building can't keep up with the need to house and feed the workers, who also earn extremely well in their dangerous and mind-numbing jobs.

Box also does a really fantastic job with his female protagonist. She seems like a real, normal person, something that many authors, and especially male authors, struggle with.

Lastly, Box manages to weave in an extensive storyline about a genetically-disadvantaged young man who sees everything that is happening, but who is largely invisible to the players in the story.

This book gave me time to get to know Cassie better, and I will definitely read future stories featuring her, even though I know that means the Lizard King will be back. Yuck.