Award-winning writer C. J. Box returns with a vengeance in this thrilling new novel featuring Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett.
It's an hour away from darkness with a bitter winter storm raging when Joe Pickett finds himself deep in the forest edging Battle Mountain, shotgun in his left hand, his truck's steering wheel handcuffed to his right-and Lamar Gardiner's arrow-riddled corpse splayed against the tree in front of him.
Lamar's murder and the sudden onslaught of the snowstorm warns: Get off the mountain. But Joe knows this episode is far from over. Somewhere in the dense timber, a killer draws back his bowstring-with Joe as his prey.
Joe's pursuit of the killer through the rugged mountains that surround the snow-packed town of Saddlestring takes a horrifying turn when his beloved foster daughter is kidnapped. Now it's personal-and Joe will stop at nothing to get her back.
Steeped in the sharp cliffs and the brutal wilderness of the Wyoming landscape, Winterkill is a masterful performance, darkly compelling and utterly unforgettable. C. J. Box places all the elements of a classic mystery in a setting where the dangerous beauty of one of America's last frontiers plays accomplice to the darkest of human motives.
Amazon.com Review
Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett returns in this third adventure in C.J. Box's tough, tender, and engrossing series, which just keeps getting better. When a forest service supervisor is murdered right after a manic shooting spree that slaughtered a herd of elk, a mysterious stranger who trains falcons and carries an unusual weapon is arrested for the slaying. Then a special investigative team headed by a devious, vindictive woman arrives in Saddlestring, bent on a bloody confrontation with a group of government-hating survivalists camped out on federal land. Among then is Jeannie Keeley, who abandoned her daughter April three years earlier. Since then, April has become like a daughter to Joe and his wife Marybeth, and a sister to their own children. Now April is right in the middle of what promises to be the last stand for the ragged band of refugees from the firestorms of Waco, Ruby Ridge, and the Montana Freemen, and only Nate the falconer, who owes Joe his life for finding the real killer of the supervisor and freeing him from jail, may be able to save her before the Bighorn Mountains are covered in blood. A tense, taut thriller marked by lyrical renderings of the harsh, beautiful landscape, Winterkill 's subtext, as in Box's previous novels, is the conflict between individual rights and freedoms and governmental power that continues to smolder in the towns and valleys of the American west. --Jane Adams
From Publishers Weekly
Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett runs into trouble again in Box's third fast-paced novel (after Open Season and Savage Run), which focuses on the conflict between parental custody and foster care, as well as the growth of "independent nation" cults. As usual, Pickett, though fallible, is the voice of reason and honesty amid a cacophony of greed and evil. During a horrendous blizzard, he finds the body of Lamar Gardiner, "the District Supervisor for the Twelve Sleep National Forest," pinned by arrows to a tree, near seven illegally shot elk. Sheriff "Bud" Barnum suspects a band of misfits, the Sovereign Citizens, which is camping in the forest, among them Jeannie Keeley, the birth mother of the Picketts' foster daughter, April. Pickett suspects locals killed the combative Gardiner. Soon, the little town of Saddlestring is swarming with press, as well as U.S. Forest Service bureaucrats, including the psychotic Melinda Strickland, and two vicious FBI agents. When Pickett learns of a plan to raid the encampment, he resolves to warn the Sovereigns, especially since Jeannie has April there. Box's description of the harsh yet splendid Wyoming landscape is vivid and memorable, his handling of complex social issues evenhanded and unsentimental. But most of his characters tend to be either two-dimensional villains or saints, and in each book the life of a member of Pickett's family is threatened. Box needs to develop more believable characters to realize his potential as an outstanding new talent. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
C. J. Box is the author of thirteen Joe Pickett novels and three stand-alones, and has won the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity, Gumshoe, and Barry Awards, as well as the French Prix Calibre .38. His most recent Joe Pickett novel, Force of Nature , debuted at #3 on the New York Times bestseller list. He lives outside Cheyenne, Wyoming, with his family.
Description:
Award-winning writer C. J. Box returns with a vengeance in this thrilling new novel featuring Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett.
It's an hour away from darkness with a bitter winter storm raging when Joe Pickett finds himself deep in the forest edging Battle Mountain, shotgun in his left hand, his truck's steering wheel handcuffed to his right-and Lamar Gardiner's arrow-riddled corpse splayed against the tree in front of him.
Lamar's murder and the sudden onslaught of the snowstorm warns: Get off the mountain. But Joe knows this episode is far from over. Somewhere in the dense timber, a killer draws back his bowstring-with Joe as his prey.
Joe's pursuit of the killer through the rugged mountains that surround the snow-packed town of Saddlestring takes a horrifying turn when his beloved foster daughter is kidnapped. Now it's personal-and Joe will stop at nothing to get her back.
Steeped in the sharp cliffs and the brutal wilderness of the Wyoming landscape, Winterkill is a masterful performance, darkly compelling and utterly unforgettable. C. J. Box places all the elements of a classic mystery in a setting where the dangerous beauty of one of America's last frontiers plays accomplice to the darkest of human motives.
Amazon.com Review
Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett returns in this third adventure in C.J. Box's tough, tender, and engrossing series, which just keeps getting better. When a forest service supervisor is murdered right after a manic shooting spree that slaughtered a herd of elk, a mysterious stranger who trains falcons and carries an unusual weapon is arrested for the slaying. Then a special investigative team headed by a devious, vindictive woman arrives in Saddlestring, bent on a bloody confrontation with a group of government-hating survivalists camped out on federal land. Among then is Jeannie Keeley, who abandoned her daughter April three years earlier. Since then, April has become like a daughter to Joe and his wife Marybeth, and a sister to their own children. Now April is right in the middle of what promises to be the last stand for the ragged band of refugees from the firestorms of Waco, Ruby Ridge, and the Montana Freemen, and only Nate the falconer, who owes Joe his life for finding the real killer of the supervisor and freeing him from jail, may be able to save her before the Bighorn Mountains are covered in blood. A tense, taut thriller marked by lyrical renderings of the harsh, beautiful landscape, Winterkill 's subtext, as in Box's previous novels, is the conflict between individual rights and freedoms and governmental power that continues to smolder in the towns and valleys of the American west. --Jane Adams
From Publishers Weekly
Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett runs into trouble again in Box's third fast-paced novel (after Open Season and Savage Run), which focuses on the conflict between parental custody and foster care, as well as the growth of "independent nation" cults. As usual, Pickett, though fallible, is the voice of reason and honesty amid a cacophony of greed and evil. During a horrendous blizzard, he finds the body of Lamar Gardiner, "the District Supervisor for the Twelve Sleep National Forest," pinned by arrows to a tree, near seven illegally shot elk. Sheriff "Bud" Barnum suspects a band of misfits, the Sovereign Citizens, which is camping in the forest, among them Jeannie Keeley, the birth mother of the Picketts' foster daughter, April. Pickett suspects locals killed the combative Gardiner. Soon, the little town of Saddlestring is swarming with press, as well as U.S. Forest Service bureaucrats, including the psychotic Melinda Strickland, and two vicious FBI agents. When Pickett learns of a plan to raid the encampment, he resolves to warn the Sovereigns, especially since Jeannie has April there. Box's description of the harsh yet splendid Wyoming landscape is vivid and memorable, his handling of complex social issues evenhanded and unsentimental. But most of his characters tend to be either two-dimensional villains or saints, and in each book the life of a member of Pickett's family is threatened. Box needs to develop more believable characters to realize his potential as an outstanding new talent.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Starred Review Box makes it a resounding three for three with this worthy successor to last year's celebrated Savage Run , which followed his acclaimed debut, Open Season (2001). The story begins with another galvanizing set piece--a Box specialty--as Joe Pickett, game warden of Wyoming's Twelve Sleep County, is caught in a mountain blizzard with a dead body beside him in his pick-up truck. The body belongs to a much-hated federal bureaucrat, who may have been killed by a group of survivalists calling themselves the Sovereigns. Pickett isn't sure he buys the connection, but when a couple of bloodthirsty FBI agents arrive in town determined to use the incident as an excuse to attack the Sovereigns, a la Waco, Joe knows he's landed in an all-too-familiar position--caught in the middle between two sets of bad guys, one of whom works for the government. Matters turn personal when Joe's foster daughter is kidnapped by her troubled mother, now living in the Sovereign camp. Box handles this controversial material superbly, showing vividly how government rigidity causes human tragedy in the name of patriotism. Pickett remains an utterly sympathetic, Gary Cooperish hero, but as the series develops, he has begun to darken noticeably. Box's version of Mr. Smith lives in Wyoming, but Washington keeps coming to him, clear-cutting individual human lives with its ever more virulent strain of bureaucracy. Pickett is still our voice for decency in the wilderness, but he's getting steadily angrier. A superb mystery series with an urgent message for troubled times. Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
About the Author
C. J. Box is the author of thirteen Joe Pickett novels and three stand-alones, and has won the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity, Gumshoe, and Barry Awards, as well as the French Prix Calibre .38. His most recent Joe Pickett novel, Force of Nature , debuted at #3 on the New York Times bestseller list. He lives outside Cheyenne, Wyoming, with his family.