Business is on the rise for private investigator Cassie Dewell and she now finds herself working two different cases simultaneously.

First is the case of the hidden treasure. Taking the nation by storm is the account of a millionaire who claims to have buried a chest full of treasure worth a million dollars or so. To find the location, would-be treasure hunters must decipher the clues in a poem. Currently, five people have died trying to find this treasure in remote, dangerous places in the Montana and Wyoming area.

Cassie isn’t trying to find the treasure … she’s been hired by the man purporting to be the author of the poem and the man who buried the treasure. He’s hired Cassie to see if she can figure out his identity. His reasoning is that if someone were to discover his identity, they might be able to deduce, from his past and his writings (ah ha! he’s an author!) where the treasure is buried and he really wants somone to find it based on his clues. Cassie’s not a fan of the treasure hunt, given that some have already died trying to find it, and a young man she knows, Kyle Westergaard, is searching for it – putting aside all else to search, likely in vain, for a hidden treasure.

The other job that Cassie is working on is a little more in-line with her typical work. A woman from Florida has hired her to find a man who swindled her out of millions of dollars. Another P.I. had been hired and was last reported in Anaconda, Montana on a strong lead and then all reports from the other P.I. stopped. What Cassie discovers is that the woman from Florida is not the only one who’s been swindled so. A small handful of older woman have had the same problem, likely from the same man. Even knowing the kind of man he is, Cassie must consciously restrain herself from his charms when she engages him.

This was a really fast read. Despite the two plots, the treasure hunt rather book-ending the novel, Cassie goes straight-ahead without much time spent doing the boring work, like research. There’s a little bit of danger and suspense when Cassie encounters the truly bad guy – the enforcer behind the swindle scam, but even this threat is put aside pretty easily when necessary.

The writing is direct and fast, keeping the reader turning pages. It’s a classic best-seller style novel. A beach read or a winter fire read. You won’t get bogged down in details, just lots of juicy action.

I am a little disappointed at how much ‘convenience’ comes in to play during the big show-down. One person happens in to cause problems and then another happens in to fix the situation. Whew… isn’t Cassie lucky? Yes she is. Because the cavalry she arranged for was delayed and she’d have been a goner if luck wasn’t on her side. This bit did make me roll my eyes.

Convenience also solves the book-end mystery of the treasure hunt. I mean … SERIOUS stroke of luck.

This kind of writing will sell a lot of books because you know what you’re going to get when you pick it up. Standing at a bookshelf in an airport? Want the known excitement or something that could equally be really good or really bad? Chances are you’re going to pick the known thriller, warts and all. And this one definitely has some warts.

Looking for a good book? Treasure State is a Cassie Dewell mystery thriller by C. J. Box. Two storylines that come and go so quickly you might not even notice. ( )

C. J. Box returns to his Montana based series (and his publisher finally agrees that it is indeed a series) with the 5th Cassie Dewell novel (or the 6th Cody Hoyt/Cassie Dewell one if you rather count that way).

Cassie has settled as a private detective and gets contacted by a wealthy woman (or one that used to be anyway) after the detective she hired to track a con-man who stole a huge amount of money from her disappeared shortly after reporting some progress. As usual for Box, the reader actually knows more than any of the characters as we see some of the actions from the other side - the detective had indeed stepped into something he should not have had - and is not going to call anyone anymore. But Cassie won't know that for most of the book - so she starts her investigation which not very surprisingly for her leads her straight to the door and in the bad graces of yet another small county's law enforcement organizations.

Interlaced with that is a second investigation - a mysterious poem about a buried treasure which had caused the death of enough people trying to get to the treasure. And that is where an old friend shows up - Kyle Westergaard (who we first met in Badlands), now fully grown up and with his usual zeal for adventures despite his challenges.

As usual, Cassie gets way over her head but never gives up (on either investigation), her mother is the usual source of delight (well, for the readers...) and if you are reading Box's other series, you may recognize her new helper - April Pickett (as I am behind on the Joe Pickett series, I am not sure how that came to be). If you never read the Joe Pickett novels, you won't miss anything here - but I will be curious to see what C. J. Box will do with that connection.

The solutions of both investigations worked inside of the framework of the novel and the author's usage of the different viewpoints with varying timeframes helped build up the tension.

If you had been reading the series, it is a decent entry into it. It may not be the best place to start with Box's work though - it relies on some of the backstory, it spoils the older novels in the series and it can get a bit too wordy and preachy in some places (especially when characters get on the topic of government). But I am still enjoying the style and the stories. ( )

Cassie is on the track of a missing PI and runs into an extortion and murder scenario that becomes a serious challenge. This interesting spinoff connects nicely to the Pickett family via their daughter April. ( )

Treasure State is another fast-paced, engrossing mystery by C.J. Box. Cassie Dewell stars as the heroine in this ongoing series where individual books can be read as stand-alones. While I have read other C.J. Box books and thoroughly enjoyed them, this was my first one with Cassie and it was a real treat!

She is a determined, diligent, intelligent private investigator who juggles her work and a challenging family.. Cassie and the criminals play key roles as does the beautiful state of Montana while she deftly solves another set of crimes.

Thanks to NetGalley, C.J. Box, and St. Martin’s Press for this great ARC. ( )

This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
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WHAT'S TREASURE STATE ABOUT?
Cassie's a bit better situated as a private investigator now, she's not raking in the dough, but for a private investigator in Montana, I can't imagine she could be doing much better. This book focuses on two independent cases—I don't mind a good two-cases-turning-out-to-be-related-after-all mystery, but I really like seeing an investigator juggle two cases like this.

The first case is initially something that Cassie's not interested in at all, but she gets sucked into things. A woman from Florida wants to hire her to find a con man who has bilked her out of a big chunk of change. She'd hired a local P.I. who traveled all over the country, seemingly milking her for expenses before ending up in Montana and ghosting her. He suggested that he was zeroing in on the target, and the client wants Cassie to take over from there.

Cassie focuses on the P.I.—if she can figure out what he was doing there, where he went—maybe even finding him—she can use that as a launching pad to finding the con man. This leads Cassie to find several other victims and a pretty solid lead on her target.

The other case is something she's been working on off and on for a while—and will pay off significantly if she can successfully close the case. Years ago, someone left a cryptic poem on the whiteboard of a Montana restaurant, promising a pile of gold to whoever could crack the clues in the poem and find it. Someone claiming to be that poet hires Cassie to see if she can figure out who he is. He's worried that someone could find the gold by figuring out who he is, rather than deciphering the clues. So he wants to see if he left himself open that way.* A couple of things break Cassie's way while she's working the con man case, and she starts to put two and two together. She just might be on the right path now.

* I hope that made sense in summary—it's clear in the book, I assure you.

There's a teeny-tine Joe Pickett cross-over here that will bring a smile to the face of Pickett fans (even those as behind as I am, and thankfully really doesn't spoil anything for me). For people who haven't read those, it's not going to alter anything—you won't even notice.

THE NARRATION
This is now the third Dewell novel that Delaine has narrated, and while I don't remember having a problem with the earlier female narrator, Delaine has definitely got this character down—and the recurring supporting characters, too.

When the perspective changes from Cassie to some others (the criminals particularly), she does a great job harnassing their characters, too, helping me to get into their headspace and like them even less than I was inclined to (well, in the case of the criminals, that is).

SO, WHAT DID I THINK ABOUT TREASURE STATE?
I liked coming back to this world for a bit. It was good to see Cassie's son doing well and Cassie getting more stability in her life. Even better, her mother wasn't around much, so she couldn't get on my nerves. I don't know what it is about Box and mother/daughter relationships, but I'm pretty sure a book could be written on it between this series and the Pickett series.

I was initially worried about some aspects of the con man case hitting some of the same notes as earlier Dewell novels—but I was glad to see that while they might have been the same notes, it was a different song. That's a sentence that will make sense to people once they've read/listened to the book, but hopefully, it's reassuring if you start to have the same concern.

The treasure hunt/poet storyline was nothing but fun for me. Simple, dogged, investigation that follows one trail after another. Yeah, she catches a break—but there's reason enough to think that without the lucky break, she'd have gotten there anyway—it just would've taken longer. Give me this kind of story any day in a PI novel and I'll be happy.

There's a lot to like in this latest adventure with Cassie Dewell and nothing really to complain about. Give this a shot—whether or not you've spent time with her before, this PI novel will satisfy. ( )