The Case of the Missing Game Warden

by Steven T. Callan

Overview

In mid-December 1956, veteran Northern California game warden Norman Bettis confronts a gang of commercial duck poachers and disappears-patrol car and all. Thirteen years later, rookie game warden Henry Glance sets out to solve the mystery of his disappearance.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781603813068
Publisher:	Epicenter Press (WA)
Publication date:	06/08/2021
Pages:	286
Sales rank:	314,775
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.71(d)

About the Author

Steve grew up in the small Northern California farm town of Orland, where he spent his high-school years playing baseball, basketball, hunting, and fishing. With an insatiable interest in wildlife, he never missed an opportunity to ride along on patrol with his father, a California Fish and Game warden. Steve went on to graduate from CSU, Chico, and attended graduate school at CSU, Sacramento. Hired by the California Department of Fish and Game in 1974, he began his career as a game warden near the Colorado River, promoted to patrol lieutenant in the Riverside/San Bernardino area, and spent the remainder of his thirty-year enforcement career in Shasta County. Callan earned numerous awards for his work in wildlife protection.

Editorial Reviews

05/17/2021

Callan (the memoir The Game Warden’s Son) makes his fiction debut with a labyrinthine series launch. In 1956, veteran game warden Norman Bettis vanishes during his investigation into a gang of commercial wildfowl poachers in California’s Butte County. Three years later, two 11-year-old boys riding their bikes in the countryside outside Temecula, Calif., hundreds of miles to the south, learn of Bettis’s disappearance after they help the local ranger capture a couple of goose poachers. One of the boys, Henry Glance, grows up to become a game warden. When his first assignment is to Bettis’s former patrol territory, a position that has been left open for 13 years, Henry is in the perfect position to try to solve the mystery of the missing warden. He eventually uncovers a surprising connection between his boyish adventure with the goose poachers and Bettis’s fate. Clichéd characters and too much background detail that slows the plot mark this as a novice’s effort. The promising setup and a likable lead, though, suggests Callan can do better next time. This could be the start of a fun, original series. (June)

Publishers Weekly