Blue Heaven
C.J. Box, 2007
St. Martin's Press
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781615593774
Summary
A twelve-year-old girl and her younger brother go on the run in the woods of northern Idaho, pursued by four men they have just watched commit murder—four men who know exactly who the children are, and where their desperate mother is waiting patiently by the phone for news of her children’s fate.
In a ranching community increasingly populated by L.A. transplants living in gaudy McMansions, the kids soon find they don’t know whom they can trust among the hundreds of retired Southern California cops who’ve given the area its nickname: “Blue Heaven.” (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
C.J. Box is the author of 11 novels including the award-winning Joe Pickett series. He’s the winner of the Anthony Award, Prix Calibre 38 (France), the Macavity Award, the Gumshoe Award, the Barry Award, and an Edgar Award and L.A. Times Book Prize finalist. Open Season was a 2001 New York Times Notable Book. (From the publisher.)
Box is a Wyoming native and has worked as a ranch hand, surveyor, fishing guide, a small town newspaper reporter and editor, and he co-owns an international tourism marketing firm with his wife, Laurie. An avid outdoorsman, Box has hunted, fished, hiked, ridden, and skied throughout Wyoming and the Mountain West. He served on the Board of Directors for the Cheyenne Frontier Days Rodeo. Box lives with his family outside of Cheyenne, Wyoming. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Retired policemen from Los Angeles, the killers easily persuade the local sheriff to let them lead the search for the missing children. Now there’s nowhere left for William and Annie to hide…and no one they can trust. Until they meet Jess Rawlins.... Grade ‘A’...don’t miss it.
Rocky Mountain News
At the start of this overly complicated thriller from bestseller Box, his first stand-alone, siblings Annie and William Taylor, ages 12 and 10, witness a gruesome murder in the woods outside the small Idaho town of Kootenai Bay, nicknamed Blue Heaven for its abundance of retired LAPD officers. Annie and William make a run for it after they're spotted by the killers, a group of crooked LAPD cops who retired to Idaho eight years earlier after pulling a complicated heist in California that left a man dead. Rancher Jess Rawlins becomes the children's only hope of survival after they take refuge in his barn. Jess must stay one step ahead of the killers, who have volunteered to help the local authorities investigate the children's disappearance. Annie and William's mother is frantic, as the scheming officers try to persuade her the children are gone for good. A subplot involving a retired California detective pursuing the original robbery case adds too many extra characters and undercuts the suspense. Readers expecting the same brisk story lines as the author's Joe Pickett crime novels will be disappointed.
Publishers Weekly
Two young kids witness a backwoods execution-style murder in their rural Idaho hamlet. Worse yet, the killers-four retired cops from Los Angeles-see the children and begin a dogged pursuit. Struggling rancher Jess Rawlins is surprised to find Annie and William hiding in his barn, but he's wise enough to believe their lurid tale. He also astutely recognizes the goodness of a stranger in town: Eduardo Villatoro, a retired detective, is determined to put one last unsolved case-a big one-to rest. Villatoro's case is the final nail in the coffin for these bad cops, and it's up to Jess and him to save the children. Readers will be anticipating the final shootout long before the bad guys catch on. Popular series author Box's first venture into stand-alone territory is a quick, satisfying, and straightforward—if fairly transparent—read. It should appeal to readers looking for a contemporary Western with an infusion of thriller; Michael McGarrity's books come to mind. Recommended for larger popular collections.
Teresa L. Jacobsen - Library Journal
[Blue Heaven] features likably flawed good guys...and springs the noble western archetypes at just the right moment to have us cheering.... And Box builds suspense so brilliantly that Blue Heaven could serve as a textbook of how to do it. —Keir Graff
Booklist
All hell breaks loose in Kootenai Bay, Idaho, after two children on a fishing trip witness an execution in this stand-alone from the chronicler of Game Warden Joe Pickett (Free Fire, 2007, etc.). "Blue Heaven" is what members of the LAPD call North Idaho when they retire here. The place has spectacular natural beauty and a tight community full of concerned neighbors who come running when Monica Taylor's son and daughter disappear. As ex-detective Eduardo Villatoro realizes, the place also has in circulation a suspicious number of $100 bills from a robbery at the Santa Anita Racetrack that left an armored car driver dead eight years ago. Even though he's retired, Villatoro can't let go of the case. But his arrival coincides with the massive hunt that's been staged for Annie and William Taylor, and he can't get anywhere with ineffectual Sheriff Ed Carey, who's farmed out the search to four retired L.A. cops. Even worse, these cops, the last people in the world who should be guarding the henhouse, have framed an innocent man for kidnapping the children and all but imprisoned Monica in her own home. The family's only hope is an aging rancher who can barely hold onto his spread and the banker who refuses to foreclose on him. Dropping the whodunit element that's always been the weakest part of Pickett's cases, Box alternates violence with surprising tenderness in a suspenseful tour de force.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also, consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Blue Heaven:
1. What kind of people live in Kootenai Bay—what kind of community is it? How has the area been changing over the past several years? How has it earned its epithet, "Blue Heaven," and what about that nickname is ironic in the course of the novel?
2. What prompts Annie and William to set off on their own to go fishing? In what way do they feel let down by the adult world?
3. What kind of child is Annie? What character traits do we see from the onset that will help her survive the events that follow?
4. Annie and William find protection with Jess Rawlins. But Rawlins doesn't believe the children's story at first. What eventually convinces him?
5. In what way is Rawlins an unlikely hero? Some see him as a throwback to the iconic heroes of the old-West myth. Do you agree? If you're a Western novel buff, what other fictional heroes is he similar to?
6. The criminals keep Monica Taylor away from the media and the phone. Is she overly passive, too easily manipulated? Or are retired cops simply too cunning to resist?
6. Why is Eduardo Villatoro's obsessed with the Santa Anna Racetrack robbery, and what brings him to northern Idaho?
7. What motivates the banker to join forces with Rawlins and the children?
8. Are you satisfied with how the novel ends? Do the retired policement get what they deserve ... or not?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online of off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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