I had never read C.J. Box, so when I heard David E. Kelley (of Boston Legal, Goliath, Mr. Mercedes, The Practice, etc.) was making one of his series into a TV show, I decided to check him out.
The show, the publicity says, is based on the novel The Highway, which is book two of four books in the Highway series, and features detective Cassie Dewell, who does not appear in book one.
So I debated. Should I read book one or book two? What the hell, I started with one, and it was a good thing I did.
The protagonist of Back of Beyond is Cody Hoyt, a Helena, Montana police officer is very good at solving crimes, but lousy at life. He's an alcoholic, a bent cop and a bad partner, with an estranged wife and surprisingly well-adjusted teenage son. When his AA sponsor is killed, supposedly while drunk, Cody follows the trail of clues to Yellowstone Park, where a backcountry tour, complete with mules, is about to begin.
The strength of the book is the author's ability to build suspense, shifting between Cody and other POV characters as they all get into deeper trouble. Most scenes leave you hanging and wanting more, resulting in a book that's hard to put down.
The Highway begins a year or two later. Cody is on the wagon and reunited with his wife and son - and has a new partner, inexperienced Cassie Dewell, a "diversity hire" because the department needed a woman. Right away, we're hit with spillover relationships from Back of Beyond, and they just keep on coming. There's enough recapping for fresh readers to get the gist, I suppose, but they sure wouldn't get the full picture.
This one features one of the most unpleasant villains I've met in mystery fiction, a long-haul trucker who fancies himself The Lizard King - due to his hobby of picking up "lot lizards" (prostitutes) at truck stops, imprisoning them for weeks to plumb the limits of his depraved desires, then snuffing them out and disposing of them like garbage.
The suspense ratchets up when the Lizard King snatches up two teenage girls whom we met on the Yellowstone trek in the first book, one of whom is still a sort-of girlfriend of Cody's son. More unpleasantness ensures. Again, a good page-turner, with an ending that makes you want to start book three right away.
Having read those two, I was ready for the premier of Big Sky, which started last week. The credits said "based on the Highway Quartet by C.J. Box." It should have read, "extremely damn loosely based."
I've now seen two episodes. Like all David E. Kelley productions, it's very well done. The plot, in abbreviated and PG-rated form, pretty much follows the book, but the main characters are almost unrecognizable.
Cody Hoyt, dumpy, middle-aged and seedy in the books, is played by young and handsome Ryan Phillippe, whom you may remember as Bob Lee Swagger from The Shooter. Cassie Dewell, who is supposed to be white and overweight, is now slim, black and beautiful, portrayed by Kylie Bunbury, who was great as an MLB pitcher in Pitch, and recently as an airhead on Brave New World. Instead of cops, Cody and Cassie are partners in a private detective firm, and, of course, they're having an affair.
This incurs the wrath of Cody's sometime wife Jenny. Though almost a nonentity in the books, here she's blonde and beautiful Katheryn Winnick, fresh from her stint as a butt-kicking Viking queen on Vikings. No longer simply a Montana housefrau, she's now a butt-kicking ex-cop.
The fat, repulsive, aging Lizard King has morphed into a slim, clean-cut young trucker. In the book, he lives with his carping, wheelchair-bound hoarder of a mother. Their shack is piled high with stacks of crap, allowing barely navigable passages from room to room. They dine on rusty canned goods that passed their expiration date when the King was a boy. On TV, mother is a smiley-faced perfect housewife, who, with her home, seems to have stepped out of an episode of Ozzie and Harriet.
The King's first lot lizard victim, haggard, bony and toothless (no longer called a lot lizard) is young and beautiful, and so resilient she survives (unlike her print persona) being mummified in plastic wrap.
Bottom line? These are good books and what appears to be good show, but they exist in alternate universes. I reckon I'll be enjoying them both, and continuing to marvel at the differences.
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