Edgar Award-winning, New York Times bestselling author C.J. Box is back with a masterpiece of suspense set in a time and place that listeners won’t soon forget.
Twenty miles across the North Dakota border, where the scenery goes from rolling grass prairie to pipeline fields, detective Cassie Dewell has been assigned as the new deputy sheriff of Grimstad-a place people used to be from, but were never headed to. Grimstad is now the oil capital of North Dakota. With oil comes money, with money comes drugs, and with drugs come the dirtiest criminals hustling to corner the market.
In the small town resides twelve-year-old Kyle Westergaard. Even though Kyle has been written off as the “slow” kid, he has dreams deeper than anyone can imagine. He wants to get out of town, take care of his mother, and give them a better life. While delivering newspapers, he witnesses a car accident and takes a mysterious bundle from the scene. Now in possession of a lot of money and packets of white powder, Kyle wonders if his luck has changed.
When the temperature drops to 30 below and a gang war heats up, Cassie realizes that she may be in over her head. As she is propelled on a collision course with a murderous enemy, she finds that the key to it all might come in the most unlikely form: an undersized boy on a bike who keeps showing up where he doesn’t belong. Because a boy like Kyle is invisible. But he sees everything.
Gutsy female cop arrives in the New Wild West Cassie Dewell has just taken a new job as Senior Investigator with the police department of Grimstad, North Dakota. The sheriff warns her that the job won’t be easy. She’s stepping into the New Wild West.Â
Were not in Wyoming anymore This is my first non Pickett novel and I loved almost everything about it. I love me some Joe Pickett, but sometimes his hijinks, boy scout attitude, borderline ineptitude (learn how to shoot a gun Joe) gets a little much. And in this book theres a new sheriff in town. Or more accurately a Chief Investigator. She’s gritty and real and gets down and dirty with investigations, in a way that Joe often doesnt.Â
Let’s go to that tropic vacation spot of the Midwest – North Dakota 30° below zero and falling I have read all of the C.J. Box books and have especially enjoyed the Joe Pickett series. But BADLANDS, which follows after BACK OF BEYOND and THE HIGHWAY, brings us back to Cassie Dewell and I like her.Â