75. Open Season by C. J. Box

#1 Joe Pickett, Wyoming Game Warden
listened on Audible
2001, Putnam
278 pgs.
Adult Murder Mystery
Finished  8/7/18
Goodreads rating:  3.92 - 17,043 ratings
My rating:  4
Setting:  Contemporary Wyoming

First line/s:  "When a high-powered rifle bullet hits living flesh it makes a distinctive -pow-WHOP- sound that is unmistakable even at a tremendous distance."

My comments: Joe Pickett is a game warden in Wyoming, a "family man" with a wife and two kids.  He's a pretty ordinary guy, thoughtful and good at his job, although bad luck seems to follow him around.  This first in a series of 14 or 15 so far is about endangered species and the possibilities of what might happen to a huge hunting area if this sort of ecological/environmental dilemma enters the picture.  It's a little bit Mike Bowditch and a little bit Walt Longmire!

Goodreads synopsis:  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. There had to be a reason that the outfitter, with whom he's had run-ins before, chose his backyard, his woodpile to die in. Even after the "outfitter murders," as they have been dubbed by the local press after the discovery of the two more bodies, are solved, Joe continues to investigate, uneasy with the easy explanation offered by the local police.
          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 the existence of this endangered species gets out, it will destroy any chance of InterWest, a multi-national natural gas company, building an oil pipeline that would bring the company billions of dollars across Wyoming, 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.