Book Review: Treasure State by C.J. Box

Published in 2022. Mystery. Cassie Dewell, a private investigator in Montana, has a new client from Florida who wants her to track down the private investigator she hired. He had been reporting in regularly until a few weeks ago, but since then, nothing. Cassie begins her investigation by picking up the other PI’s tracks, leading her to a small town called Anaconda. At the same time, she receives a interesting phone call challenging her to find out who is behind the latest treasure hunt. As she continues to run into clues for that, she sees Kyle Westergaard, a young man she knows from a previous case in North Dakota. He has been on the treasure hunt for over two years.

Although this isn’t the most challenging case for Cassie, I enjoyed it. I like Cassie—she’s clever and down-to-earth with problems all of us face in life. She’s overweight and a single mom with a business to run. Life is challenging for her, but she loves it.

The author also provides a lot of background information about mining in Montana in the early nineteen hundreds, and the devastation caused by it. The town of Anaconda was created by the mining corporations in Butte, so the bigwigs wouldn’t have the pollution and toxins from mining close to home. They poisoned someplace else instead. People died and no one did anything to stop it. The federal government even sent troops in to suppress the workers and protect the industry.