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    Open Season
    Open Season
    Open Season
    Audiobook7 hours

    Open Season

    Written by C. J. Box

    Narrated by David Chandler

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Don’t miss the JOE PICKETT series—now available to stream on Paramount+

    The first novel in the thrilling series featuring Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett from #1 New York Times bestselling author C. J. Box.

    Joe Pickett is the new game warden in Twelve Sleep, Wyoming, a town where nearly everyone hunts and the game warden—especially one like Joe who won’t take bribes or look the other way—is far from popular. When he finds a local hunting outfitter dead, splayed out on the woodpile
    behind his state-owned home, he takes it personally. Even after the discovery of two more bodies, and the resolution of the case by local police, Joe continues to investigate.

    As Joe digs deeper into the murders, he soon discovers that the outfitter brought more than death to his backdoor: he brought Joe an endangered species, thought to be extinct, which is now living in his woodpile. But if word of this rare species gets out, it will destroy any chance of InterWest,
    a multi-national natural gas company, building an oil pipeline through the mountains and forests of Twelve Sleep. The closer Joe comes to the truth behind the outfitter murders, the endangered species, and InterWest, the closer he comes to losing everything he holds dear.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateJan 21, 2010
    ISBN9781449808822
    Open Season
    Author

    C. J. Box

    C.J. Box is the New York Times bestselling author of fifteen novels including the award-winning Joe Pickett series. Box has won the Edgar Award for Best Novel as well as the Anthony, Macavity, Barry, and Le Calibre .38 awards. His novels have been translated into twenty-five languages. Box lives outside of Cheyenne, Wyoming. 

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    Reviews for Open Season

    4/5

    781 ratings52 reviews

    What did you think?

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    • 5/5
      Learned about the book series from the authors interview on meateater. It's like terminal list with game animals.
    • 5/5
      Great debut and great series! Loved this first book by C. J. Box. Can't wait to read the 2nd book in the series. Breezed right through this one! C. J. Box can tell a great story where you feel you are right there in the outdoors of Wyoming. Riveting suspense which make the pages turn fast!
    • 1/5
      Stupid stupid ending! I don't understand why this book was rated so high.
    • 5/5
      I started with this, the first in the Joe Pickett series, and am now on book 9 and its only been 2 weeks! I love the characters and the narration is one of the best I have listened to. I will listen to all in the series and will more than likely listen a second time.
    • 5/5
      Very well written mystery. Makes me re-appreciate the Wyoming landscape. Can't wait to read all of his other books@
    • 5/5
      C.J. Box is always a great read. Love his writing.
    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed this book! Loved the storyline and characters.
    • 5/5
      Great suspense and characters with vivid descriptions of the wilderness the story takes place
    • 3/5
      The first book in the succesful series is overlong, overwritten, and predictable, although the Wyoming setting is quite well done. A little too paint-by-numbers for my liking. The actions of the bad guy toward the end of the book don't make a lot of sense if he is trying to get away with the crime.
    • 4/5
      First in the long-running Joe Pickett series, this book introduces us to Joe Pickett. Joe is a Game Warden in Wyoming, where he lives with his young family.

      The book opens with a local hunting guide found dead in Joe's backyard. The hunting guide is known to cross the lines when it comes to hunting practices, and he's already had a previous run in with Joe. It appears the guide was shot somewhere else and made a big effort to reach Joe before he died. But why?

      The book takes a lot of unexpected twists and turns. Overall a good "thriller" type mystery.
    • 3/5
      Not my usual fare. Very masculine, lots of guns, wild critters, wilderness- in spite of how sensitive the main character is. Also page turning ending replete with a rather gory denouement.
    • 4/5
      This is the first of the twenty plus installments of the Joe Pickett mysteries. Joe is a Wyoming game warden. He has just been given his first district to oversee. His pregnant wife and two young daughters have joined him in tiny, outdated isolated government housing. He’d love to be able to give them more. His wife (and her mother) especially chafe under the low wages and tight housing.Besides the usual wildlife concerns, a natural gas pipeline company is spending a huge amount of money to push a pipeline through the district.Then one night, his oldest daughter sees a monster come down from the mountain. There are strange rumors about the impossible in the high country. Bodies began to pile up.What will a good and moral man do to protect his district and, more especially, his family?I love the mountains and the wildlife in this book. I also like the protagonist's character. It's reassuring to me in this time of moral ambiguity to have a 'straight shooting' protagonist.I found some scenes quite intense, almost uncomfortably so. Threatening small children can make a tough read. I live in an area where hunting is a fact of life, and although there can be abuses, I believe it is necessary. However, those with anti-hunting sentiments will probably not enjoy this series. Athough a game warden is responsible for all the wildlife in the district, hunting is of course, a primary concern.
    • 5/5
      I've only recently discovered C. J. Box. I love his stories. I love the setting in Montana and the characters are terrific. The scenery and wildlife are a great backdrop for interesting and suspenseful tales. I plan to read all of his books. I'll keep this book for the author signature.
    • 4/5
      Here is a much more conventional mystery, the first in the Joe Pickett series that I thought to try. Pickett is a young game warden up against familiar forces - hunters, would-be backwoodsmen and women, corrupt officials. With a tenuous hold on his job and a family to support, he can't afford to make another mistake. But one of those backwoodsmen has galloped into his yard at night and died on his woodpile, trying to bring him something. What did his bring? Who killed him? The characters are picturesque, but Pickett is still a little wet behind the ink. Or maybe I just like my detectives a little older and world-weary. I'll see how the next in the series goes.Edit | More
    • 5/5
      SO SO SO GOOD.Joe Pickett is a Wyoming game warden, just an all-around good guy. He doesn't seem to have any major baggage or drama that he carries to work with him. He doesn't seem to habitually bend the rules or laws in his pursuit of justice, or at least not yet. These are some of the features that I love about many of the detective and crime series that I love to read. (I'm looking at you, Harry Bosch.) But in this first Pickett book, I found that Joe Pickett really loves his job, he loves the land and animals that he protects, and he wants his family to respect him for what he does. He's a regular guy.Joe also isn't known for being a sharpshooter or one of "tough-guy" types, which is interesting given the way the story begins and the way everything unfolds, but I'm handing out no spoilers here. But this was neat and different and refreshing for me. Again, a regular guy.I love the premise of the story, the way CJ Box marries endangered animals, big game hunting, and the environment into the plot. This is a really cool modern western/suspense-thriller with some really bad guys and I loved every second of it, especially toward the end when the scenes were most intense. I maintain that I typically do not love kids in a plot line unless they're really well done but MY WORD Pickett's 7-year-old daughter Sheridan is dynamite. She was so delightful in this story and became a fast favorite as I listened. She was essential to the plot, she moved the story forward, and I wanted to know more about her. I loved her time on the pages and she was just a cool, cool kid.I picked up this series to begin with because I love the Wyoming country so much. I've taken these huge road trips from my own place here in Eastern North Carolina across the US twice now, and a big part of both of those trips was spent in Wyoming. It is no exaggeration that I think about that land and want to be back there almost every single day. CJ Box has put me right back there with his descriptions of the land and the nature. If I can't be there in person, being there with this book and audiobook is very, very cool.I very rarely read books in a series close together or back-to-back, but I immediately bought the second audiobook and made sure to have the next two Pickett books on hand. I'm not sure if I love Joe Pickett more or the setting, but either way, I feel like I'm throwing everything aside so I can keep going.Audiobook Notes: At first, I wasn't sure how I would enjoy David Chandler as the voice of Joe Pickett. Honestly, he doesn't have the most "tough guy" voice that I've ever heard and I thought Pickett was supposed to be this big game warden out of Wyoming, so I was expecting something maybe a little heavier or deeper. However, by the end of the first scene and within the first few chapters, as I began to get to know Joe, I realized that David Chandler is so perfect for this role. He was also so great when he was reading little Sheridan's parts too.By the end of the book, I had researched the entire audiobook series to see if Mr. Chandler continues to narrate because I enjoyed it so much, so I feel pretty sure that I'll continue listening from Audible since the narrator has not changed. Well worth the credit I used for this purchase.Title: Open Season by C.J. BoxSeries: Joe Pickett #1Narrated by: David ChandlerPublisher: Recorded BooksLength: 7 hours, 49 minutes, Unabridged
    • 4/5
      Joe Pickett is a relatively new game warden in Saddlestring in Wyoming's Twelve Sleep Mountain Range. Joe and his wife have two young daughters and they live paycheck-to-paycheck, just trying to get by. One day their lives are turned upside down when alleged poacher, Ote Keeley, is found dead on the woodpile behind their house. Soon two more bodies are found at a campsite deep in the woods. Someone wants Joe to stop the investigation and will stop at nothing to keep him from getting more involved.

      This series has been recommended to me numerous times. I already read some similar series so I never picked it up. I really enjoyed the characters and setting and am happy I finally decided to read the first one. It definitely won't be the last time I visit Wyoming with Joe Pickett and his family.


      TBR 1119
    • 4/5
      I am a huge fan of Nevada Barr's Park Ranger series and Paul Doiron's Game Warden series so it only seemed natural to pick up the first book in this series staring Joe Pickett as a Game Warden in Wyoming. Right away there are very obvious differences with this series. Joe is married and has a family. There is also the legalese that started many chapters explaining the laws that Joe must turn to in order to be an ethical Warden. I enjoyed the family aspect and learning about Wyoming. I found the policies made me lose my reading momentum. I prefer this type of information to be built into the story so that, yes, I learn but that it doesn't stop the story to explain what I am learning. That whole "spoon full of sugar" concept. :)
    • 2/5
      At present I have got stuck on this. The characters have not developed enough personality to want me to continue, their behaviour unconvincing, and the plot, so far, is not drawing me in. I may come back to it. Or not.
    • 3/5
      I seem to be on a string of reading debut novels lately, and I'll say you can almost always tell when an author is just starting out, especially when trying to establish a set of characters to be revisited in future installments of a series. In this one, the tell was, as with many debuts, a reliance on telling instead of showing. You don't have to tell me Joe loves his wife, you actually did a good job of showing me with his actions. I'll read more to see if the style continues to improve.
    • 3/5
      This is so guy-lit. Upright, thoughtfully taciturn game warden with everything at stake (pregnant wife, 2 daughters) pursues further information in a "closed" multiple murder. There really isn't much mystery as the bad guys are pretty totally telegraphed as is the MacGuffin The women are described in terms of physical attributes and are supportive, or wantons, or mother-in-laws, but not players.
    • 4/5
      I'll be reading the next Joe Pickett novel
    • 3/5
      I've been meaning to try this series for a while. I enjoyed it. It's light reading and while the mystery wasn't very mysterious, I found the end with the daughter very suspenseful. If you're after a light short crime read then this will do.
    • 4/5
      Joe Pickett is a good character. Seems kind of innocent, but I liked that. He has to deal with people who are anything but innocent. Good murder mystery, and I like that the setting is in Wyoming and not some big city.
    • 4/5
      I started reading this series years ago and I'm still trying to update my acct with all of the books I've read from before I joined GR. I don't remember offhand specific details about each book in this series but I liked it a lot because it's set in the back-country wilderness. I remember I had started reading it because I just got caught up on the Nevada Barr- Anna Pigeon series and I was looking for something similar. This one fit the bill. It's a great series especially if you like outdoor settings and mysteries.
    • 5/5
      (Fiction, Mystery, Series)#1 in the Game Warden Joe Pickett series, set in Wyoming.This was a wonderful introduction to a great new-to-me series, now at #18. It featured a likeable and believable protagonist and a solid mystery. There is ‘good suspense’, but it is not overwhelming as it seems to be in so many ‘crime’ novels these days.Clearly, I have some catch-up reading to do.4½ stars
    • 4/5
      The first novel of a series featuring Joe Pickett, a Wyoming game warden who get involved in a mystery with poachers, endangered species, big oil and some really nefarious characters. The setting is cool; Wyoming wilderness, family man, mystery. A tale of good guys gone bad. I especially liked the 4 year old girl, who acted like one.Think I'll have another book, thank you.
    • 4/5
      This is the first novel in the mystery series featuring Joe Pickett, a game warden in Wyoming who stumbles into a mystery involving poachers, endangered species, Big Oil. The Wyoming setting invites comparison to Craig Johnson's [Walt Longmire], and at least in this first book Box doesn't quite deliver. Pickett is an appealing protagonist, although I found his portrayal at the outset of the story as a sort of bumbling Barney Fife of the High Plains to be drawn a little too crudely to make his intelligence and deduction skills later in the book entirely believable. Still, it's a promising start to a series that captured my interest enough to pick up the next book.
    • 4/5
      It's been a long time since I've read a whole book in one day! This one had me in its grip from page one. I like the setting--Wyoming wilderness--and the characters--a game warden and his family (though most of the rest are pretty ugly)--in this first of a long series of mysteries by this author. Although I'm not sure the complex chain of events holds together perfectly, it keeps on moving.

      A big thank you to the person who recommended these books. I'll definitely read more!
    • 4/5
      Back in 2001, CJ Box wrote the first novel featuring Joe Pickett. This is it. A great story that keeps you up wondering who/what and, most importantly - why? People are willing to kill over land - always have been - but this is particularly brutal. Land leases, government projects with big money pay days, little forest critters. These all combine in a tale of good guys gone bad.
    • 4/5
      From Book Cover:

      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.

      My Thoughts:
      An extremely good first novel, and we hope the writer has some more ideas to write about that will continue our attention to his special outlook.