Shadows Reel (Joe Pickett, #22)

by C J Box

[annieb123]

Originally posted on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

Shadows Reel is the 22nd Joe Picket western mystery by C.J. Box. Released 8th March 2022 by Penguin on their G. P. Punam's Sons imprint, it's 368 pages and is available in hardcover, audio, and ebook formats. Paperback edition due out in April 2022. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.

I have enjoyed the books in this series very much. It's solidly relaxing reading, where the good guys are good, the bad guys are evil, and the denouements and resolutions, when they come, are unalloyed and satisfying. This particular installment to the series is a departure, and I'm not convinced it's a good one. There have always been "men gotta be men" aspects to the characters and the earlier books, but this one is overly testosterone soaked and unnecessarily egregiously violent from the beginning on.

The main characters are back, and it's a holiday gathering for the Picketts, with daughters home for Thanksgiving. Joe's friend Nate is gone for the holiday, chasing down a violent psychopath who threatened his young family and killed or stole all his raptors (he's a falconer who works with raptors in bird abatement). There are several seemingly disparate side plot threads which wind together into one overarching story. On the surface, it's a creative story, well told.

My big problem with the book is the propagandist slant. The author spends a significant amount of time spouting conservative media talking points, no matter how little similarity they bear to objective fact. He holds forth about "Antifa chapters" and "organized street action" and never once pauses to mention Boogaloo Boys, Proud Boys, or any domestic terrorist right-wing organizations. He refers to pushback on police violence as creating an "urban hellscape". He mocks and belittles protestors as dimwitted easily led sheep, parasites on their trust-fund incomes, and living in their parents' basements.

I get that westerns generally, and this series specifically, are full of "good old boys" doing what cowboy hat wearing late-middle-aged guys do, but this one went past that by a country mile, directly into pandering to a not-very-nice vocal subsegment of the population. I spent a lot of the book shaking my head and angry at the straight-outta-FoxEntertainment sound bites. I have no idea how much (or how closely, if any) of fictive Joe Pickett's philosophy is also author C.J. Box's belief system, but it really made me sad, unsettled, and wary of continuing with the series.

Three and a half stars. If I read the next book, it will be with trepidation.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.