This was a really good book. I read the prequel, Badlands, and I have always felt that that book was one of Box's best efforts and his finest of all. The protagonist, Cassie Sewell, a deputy in an oil-boom town of North Dakota, battles the "lizard king," a trucker who kidnaps, rapes, and murders truck stop prostitutes. It's a particularly good book because of the richness of Cassie's character; a female cop in a man's world, widowed, struggling to bring up her son with her mother's help.
The Biitteroots shows us Cassie a year or two later after she quit her job and moved to Bozeman, Montana. She becomes a private investigator and the beginning of the book shows us her in action against a bail-jumper. She is called in by a fierce woman lawyer who has to defend an accused rapist. Cassie is disgusted with the man who appears obviously guilty, yet she agrees to investigate the case. Once she arrives in the mountainous backwater of Western Montana she runs afoul of the local rancher and his family who more or less dominate the politics and economy of the area. I won't go into detail, but Cassie is clearly abused by these ranchers in an effort to hide the truth of the case from her. She has too overcome and find the truth of the crime.
C. J. Box is a well-known writer with a lot of fans, but I don't think he has written a better book than The Bitterroots. I could not put this book down as I was fascinated and generally fearful for Cassie even up to the end of the book. There are a number of excellent plot twists and salty Montana characters to hold the reader's interest. I highly recommend this book; read it you won't be sorry. 5/5 Stars.
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