Trackers 3 and 4

Oh, what a glorious weekend - I inhaled books. I needed to read!
On Friday I treated myself to a trip to the bookstore - I was desperate for an afternoon of reading mysteries! I bought four and read two of them almost without stopping.

First was a surprising delight.
The Case of the Missing Marquess: An Enola Holmes Mystery
By Nancy Springer
A 2007 nominee for the Edgar Best Juvenile Mystery
Read my post here.

Second was
Open Season: A Joe Pickett Novel
By C. J. Box
2001 Edgar Award Nominee for Best First Novel by an American Author

I have seen C. J. Box recommended on several mystery lists I visit but had never read one of his titles. This one had a glowing recommendation on its cover by Tony Hillerman, one of my favorite authors. So I bought it. Hillerman’s Navajo mysteries contain gorgeous imagery of the landscape, so I can understand his attraction to Box whose imagery of Wyoming is equally beautiful.

When the canyon walls finally opened, the bowl in the mountains was even more lush and untrammeled than Joe had imagined it could be. It was a beautiful, remarkable place. Around the rim of the bowl in all directions were sheer, red rock cliffs, which provided both protection and a windbreak. Thin rivulets of water that looked like old lace streamed down the rock walls from above.

I have to say that more and more I avoid mysteries that graphically describe the crimes involved and that use language that Captain Kirk in Star Trek IV describes as colorful metaphors. This one did both. However, the characters became very real to me from the first pages. And the plot was fantastic. It sent me to the internet to learn more about endangered species and the laws that protect them. In my opinion, that is what good writers do. Their research when well done is so much a part of the action that readers don’t know that they are learning. Drawing from my long ago college days, I cling to the belief that literature - including mysteries - should instruct as well as entertain.

Open Season happens to be a 1st in a series title (but not on my challenge list). However, though I thoroughly enjoyed it and read it in one sitting and would really like to follow the development of Game Warden Joe Pickett, I don’t think that I can - that pesky language and those crime descriptions.

Joe Pickett is new to his beat as game warden. He is not totally trusted because he is replacing a much loved warden. Trusted or not, he is soon drawn into a tangled web of deceit, murder, and mysterious hints to a animal species long thought extinct that if it resurfaces could change the lives of everyone in power around Joe. If found to still exist, the government would move in and the economy of the entire area would suffer.

'Do you realize what would happen to this valley if it got out that there might be something in the mountains? . . . They'd [logging truck drivers, cowboys, outfitters, fishing guides] be unemployed while the Feds roped off the entire valley for the future. Environmentalists from all over the country would move in with their little round glasses and sandals and start giving press conferences on how they're here to protect the innocent little creatures from the ignorant locals.'

Pickett has a very interesting philosophy concerning communication.

Joe had always considered individual words as finite units of currency, and he believed in savings. He never wanted to waste or unnecessarily expend words. To Joe, words meant things. They should be spent wisely. Joe sometimes paused for a long time until he could come up with the right words to express exactly what he wanted to say.

And I will waste no currency of communication to hint what the "innocent little creatures" might be. But Joe's solution made the read worthwhile.

4 Delights!!!!