C.J. Box: real western, real fast
Excerpts from the interview by Lynn Kaczmarek in the April/May 2003 issue of Mystery News
C.J. Box answers the phone"Hi, this is Chuck." His voice is clear and friendly. He says he's suffering from jet lag, but it's not apparent in his tone or his demeanor. Three weeks later, suffering from the same jet lag myself, I admired him all the more.
C.J. Box is the CEO of Rocky Mountain International Corporation, a marketing company that promotes tourism for Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Idaho and North Dakota. His company has five offices in Europe, so this year has found him traveling a lot to attend trade shows and do training. And, ooh yea, he writes mysteries too.
Laced with a slightly macabre sense of humor, C.J. Box's first book, Open Season, introduces Joe Pickett, the Twelve Sleep County Game Warden. At the beginning of the book, he has only been on the job a few weeks, but has already made a name for himself by arresting the Governor of Wyoming for fishing without a license. And then a local hunting outfitter ends up murdered near Joe's home. Other murders follow and Joe digs in, determined to find the killer and save the endangered Miller's Weasels living in his woodpile...
Winter Kill, the third in the series is due out in May. My favorite of the three, it is clear that C.J. Box is polishing his craft. Winter Kill opens with a chilling scene of a man gone mad, shooting wildly into a herd of elk. Joe manages to get the guy into his truck, but then finds himself handcuffed to the steering wheel, the madman running into the trees. Eventually Joe frees himself and finds his assailant...plastered against a tree, the arrows through his chest holding him upright. Something very strange is going on in Twelve Sleep County. And it's not just the elk killer. There's a group of guys straight out of Ruby Ridge and Waco called the Soverign Citizens of the Rocky Mountains camped out on Forest Service lad. And then there is one evil Forest Service official, Melinda Strickland. But more importantly, there's Nate Romanowski, a reclusive mountain man, a falconer, a quiet man of honor...
Box is working on number four, "Tentatively called Wanton Destruction, which is a game and fish statute -- the wanton destruction of a game animal. And this one's about cattle and wildlife mutilation...In a way, there are humorous things about it... About every 30 years there are a bunch of reports of cattle mutilation. Usually 10 or 12 in one place where there's no tire tracks and there's all sorts of things done to them. When I was growing up I remember hearing about them, but I just forgot about themand they just vanished. they started up again last summer in Montana and Iwas able to get some photos and talk to the reporter who covered it, and it is kind of funny in a way, 'cause it's cows..." It's funny...but it's not funny, you know?...
Wherever he is, whatever he's writing, whatever he's reading, for that matter, knowing C.J. Box, it clearly won't turn out to be boring. In the Publisher's Weekly starred review of Open Season, they said "Meet Joe Pickett: he's going to be a mystery star." And so will C.J. Box.
Read the complete interview in the April/May 2003 issue of Mystery News
