Winterkill (Joe Pickett Series #3)

From Barnes & Noble

The Barnes & Noble Review
C. J. Box, one of mystery's most exciting new talents, offers more thrills and chills amid the dangerous beauties of the Wyoming wilderness in Winterkill. Game warden Joe Pickett is used to working alone: He has a 1,500-square-mile district to patrol, and when things are going well he sees more wildlife than people, even during hunting season. Unfortunately, things aren't going so well this winter: Just days before Christmas, as a massive storm builds in the mountains, Joe comes upon a crime -- an elk slaughter committed by a local federal bureaucrat. Things get more complicated when the criminal escapes into the storm, only to be killed by an unknown assailant armed with a powerful hunting bow. Joe's search for the murderer is complicated by more deadly weather, plus jurisdictional disputes, political power plays, and family worries. The sheriff and a power-hungry federal investigator want to pin the crime on forces from a recently arrived antigovernment isolationist group. But as the investigation unfolds, Joe begins to suspect that the real killer is someone local, shielded by familiarity and the powerful storms that bury and erase vital evidence. Unfortunately, more than truth and justice hang in the balance -- it's also a personal matter for Joe, whose beloved foster daughter has been returned to the custody of her birth mother, who is one of the isolationists. Sue Stone

USA Today

Box's advantage is how well he describes winter in Wyoming. Some books about food can whet your appetite. Winterkill will have you grabbing another blanket. — Bob Minzesheimer

The Washington Post

Box provides exquisite descriptions of the falcons that one character has trained, and he delineates Pickett's wife and daughters with skill. His story moves smoothly and suspensefully to the showdown between Pickett and the reckless federal officials who have invaded his world. — Patrick Anderson

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. Agent, Andy Whelchel. (May 12) Forecast: With a 25-city author tour driving a big promotional push, this one should continue to build on the numbers established by the first two books in the series. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Winterkill is the third in Box's series featuring Wyoming state game warden Joe Pickett, an earnest and very likable family man who wants only to do his job well and take care of his wife and three daughters. On the same day that Joe finds the Forest Service district supervisor in a frenzied massacre of an elk herd, a band of refugees from Waco, Ruby Ridge, and the Montana Freemen, known as "the Sovereigns," take up residence in a nearby campground. These two events spark the perennial and sometime volatile tension between individual rights and government stewardship, leading to disaster for Joe and his loved ones. Great characters, great setting, and great storytelling, enriched by a talented reading by actor and voice-artist Ray Gautreau. Highly recommended.-Kristen L. Smith, Loras Coll. Lib., Dubuque, IA Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

The latest in an award-winning series set in the Bighorn Mountains (Savage Run, 2002, etc.). Minutes after Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett arrests Lamar Gardiner, District Supervisor for the Twelve Sleep National Forest, for firing into a herd of elk, killing seven animals and blindly continuing to reload with cigarettes after he runs out of shells, Gardiner manages to handcuff Joe to his steering wheel and bolt off into a winter storm, only to turn up pinned to a tree with a pair of arrows, his throat cut. And things get even messier from that point on. The attack on a federal agent, together with reports that the Nation of the Rocky Mountain Sovereign Citizens has established an encampment in Twelve Sleep, brings gung-ho US Forest Service investigator Melinda Strickland and FBI sharpshooter Dick Munker, a veteran of Waco and Ruby Ridge, to town. Strickland maintains that she's just trying to get justice for a murdered official, but she seems awfully eager to tie the perp to the Sovereigns. By the time Joe arrests one of Gardiner's disappointing killers and identifies the other, Strickland and Munker are already planning an all-out attack on the encampment. The prospect is a personal nightmare for Joe, since Jeannie Keeley, the drifter whose abandoned daughter April Joe and his wife have been trying to adopt, has reclaimed April and spirited her off to the dubious shelter of the Sovereigns. The loose ends that make this the least satisfactory of Joe's three cases to date still don't inhibit Box's gift for nonstop action and his ability to see every side of the most divisive issues in the West. Author tour. Agent: Andy Whelchel/National Writers Literary Agency