Winterkill

[Amazon Link]
(paid link)

Another very good (but see below) novel in C.J. Box's series with hero game warden Joe Pickett.

In his duties as game warden, Joe is used to the occasional hunter bagging an over-limit or out-of-season elk. But there's something very unusual about the mass wapiti carnage he encounters at the beginning of the book. For one thing, it's being done by Lamar Gardiner, an employee of the US Forest Service. And when Joe tracks Lamar down, he's run out of cartridges and is attempting to reload his rifle with cigarettes.

Unlike the near-superheroes encountered in other crime fiction, Joe makes mistakes in suspect handling. Here, Joe's assumptions about Lamar's docility are confounded when Lamar handcuffs him to the steering wheel of his truck and escapes. Joe tracks him down, but—oops!—someone has taken the opportunity to shoot Lamar with a couple of arrows and slit his throat.

In a seemingly unrelated event, the "Sovereigns", a radical anti-government group, have entered the area, bringing trashy Jeannie Keeley back to town with them. Jeannie is back for her daughter April, who she abandoned years ago, and is now foster daughter to Joe and his wife Marybeth.

Trying to avoid spoilers here: I've read a lot of crime fiction, and there are certain conventions. You get to expect that things will generally work out in a certain way. Those things don't happen here. No doubt Box did this intentionally, and he made me think about my fictional preconceptions.


Last Modified 2024-01-27 5:34 AM EDT