Pun Salad

OK, so it's a little gimmicky. Right at the beginning, Joe Pickett's truck has been discovered at "Antler Creek Junction", with multiple bullet holes, one of them in Joe's head.

Does Joe survive? Reader, you know the answer as well as I do: if Arthur Conan Doyle couldn't kill off Sherlock Holmes at Reichenbach Falls, C.J. Box is not going to kill off Joe Pickett at Antler Creek Junction.

But, aside from a few flashbacks to his investigations, Joe spends most of this book comatose in a Billings hospital, watched over by wife Marybeth. Leaving daughters Sheridan, Lucy, and April to do their own investigating. Joe was obviously set up for the ambush by one of the ranches accessed via Antler Creek Junction. Only problem being: there are three of them. And they are all acting kinda sus, as the kids say.

Worse: the perpetrators are still in the area, and they won't get paid unless and until they finish the job of killing Joe. And the diligent investigations of the daughters puts them in danger as well.

The usual very good outing from Mr. Box.