Pretty good short story that makes you want a longer version. Joe found a truck underneath iced reservoir while checking licenses of ice fishermen. ( )

“He stopped and stared. Something was sticking up through the surface of the ice in the middle of the flow; something thin, spindly, and black. His first thought was that it was a free branch.

The surface of the ice changed as he walked. There was a rim of broken ice plates, then a slick surface. Ice told stories, Joe knew. Whatever happened could be seen and felt by examining the ice. Something had crashed through here, and the water had recently frozen back over it.

It was a frozen human hand, reaching up through the ice, not a branch.”

••••

This story is only twenty-something pages—I wish it was longer! Anyway, Joe Pickett is the same as ever in this short little story. He wants to do the right thing with regard to the body in the lake, but his fellow officers don’t have the same morals. This is just a tiny glimpse of Joe’s world as game warden out in Wyoming, but it makes me wish I had the next novel right here with me.

By the way, nobody writes scenery and nature like CJ Box. It is 95 degrees right now, right where I’m sitting outside, reading this story. It is 20-30 degrees below zero in this story, and CJ Box has managed to make me feel the cold. ( )