Pun Salad

I started reading C. J. Box back in 2010. And now I'm almost caught up! And this is yet another page-turner. (Oops, sorry. Kindle version. Make that "yet another screen-swiper".)

Box's continuing hero, Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett, finds himself in real trouble. Again. He's tasked by the (unlikeable and dishonest) governor to lead an elk hunt, escorting an arrogant, entitled tech billionaire and his retinue up into the mountains. The hope is that the tech guy will enjoy himself so much that he locate a massive server farm in Wyoming. The governor threatens Joe's job if he doesn't pull that off.

Little does Joe realize he's walking into a trap set by a demented rancher and his sons; they plan to exact murderous revenge on the Zuckerberg-like baron, and leave no witnesses. So what starts as an interesting hunting expedition soon turns into a deadly game of hide-and-seek in the Wyoming wildnerness. Who will survive?

(Well, Joe will. Barely. C. J. is not gonna kill off Joe.)

There's also a Nate Romanowski subplot. A sociopathic rival falconer has encroached on Nate's territory, looking to enrich himself by selling birds illegally to Saudi sheiks. That plot is not concluded, but a development late in the book guarantees that it will continue in the next volume. Which I already have in my Kindle library.