In C.J. Box’s New York Times bestseller, Badlands, the town of Grimstad used to be a place people came from but were never headed to. Now it’s the oil capital of North Dakota. With oil comes money, with money comes drugs, and with drugs come the dirtiest criminals Grimstad’s new deputy sheriff Cassie Dewell has ever encountered. . . Twelve-year-old Kyle Westergaard dreams of getting out of … Westergaard dreams of getting out of Grimstad and leading a better life. Even though Kyle has been written off as a “slow” kid, he has dreams deeper than anyone can imagine. One day, while delivering newspapers, he witnesses a car accident and takes a mysterious bundle from the scene. Suddenly he’s in possession of a lot of money–and packets of white powder–and Kyle can’t help but wonder whether his luck has changed…for better or for worse.
“Suspenseful–you can’t put it down.’‘–Library Journal
When the temperature drops to 30 below and a gang war heats up, it’s up to Cassie to help restore law and order. But is she 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: a boy on a bike named Kyle. He keeps showing up where he doesn’t belong. And he seems to know something that Cassie does not about what lies beneath the surface of this small and troubled town…
“The unrelenting cold makes this the perfect beach read.”–Kirkus Reviews
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I love C.J. Box books! Excellent author writing excellent stories!
I just re-read this book and loved it the second time around too. This is book 2 of the Cassie Dewell series and I’m making my way to number 4 THE BITTERROOTS.
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.
A little overweight, 36 years old, a mom, and a darn good police officer, Cassie leaves Montana, where she was unappreciated and is now the Chief Investigator on the Bakken County Sheriff’s Department based out of Grimstad, North Dakota.
Grimstad is a BOOMING oil town. The details given on the oil industry by author Box were fascinating. To go from a sleepy, dying small town to a population of over 60,000 practically overnight causes all kinds of problems, especially for law enforcement.
Not only is Cassie tracking down drug lowlife but serial killer Lizard King introduced in THE HIGHWAY is still very much on Cassie’s radar.
Box describes the places he writes about so well. I always feel like I would recognize those places immediately if I ever saw them. I felt the same about Grimstad. And he described the biting cold very well too – I needed to put a sweatshirt on partway through the book.
Characters are fully described – good guys and bad. The storyline is exciting, full of new info (at least to me), and is a great continuation of this latest series.
read them all..I wish he could write them faster. Like maybe 1 a week.
I love C. J. Box. Not sure how I missed this when it came out a couple of years back. Cassie moves to Grimstad, North Dakota to become the chief investigator for the police department. Grimstad is in the middle of the fracking boom and men out number women 20 to 1. Cassie finds out she was hired because the chief thinks there may be a dirty cop on his payroll. And, Cassie is still trying to track down a seriel killer, the Lizard King, from when she was in Montana.
Drugs are rampant in Grimstad brought in by a motorcycle gang. A couple of members of the gang turn up dead, tortured, dismembered. Another biker disappears and body parts turn up all over town. MS13 is taking over the drug trade.
Kyle is delivering papers and sees a car run off the road by another car. Cops show up fast, too fast. They see Kyle and tell him to go home. Kyle is a Fetal Alcohol Syndrome baby, small for his age with a speech impediment. Kyle sees something fly out of the car as it rolls down the hill and takes it home with him. It is drugs, packaged for sale, and several bundles of cash. Kyle’s mom’s boyfriend, T-Lock, finds the drugs and money and decides to go into business for himself. He tells Kyle not to tell anyone.
T-Lock thinks he will get rich from selling the drugs, but he hadn’t figured on MS13, who take no prisoners. MS13 wants their drugs back and don’t care who they have to go thru to get them. Everyone Kyle knows is in danger and no one will help him.
This was a really good story. I like Cassie and Kirkbride. As a truck driver, some of the specifics about the truck drove me crazy, but I can live with it. MS13 scares the crap out of me and I really hope they aren’t any of them where I live. The bakkan oil boom reminds me of the gold rush of the 1850s.
Cassie still hasn’t found the Lizard King, so I am waiting for the next book.