December 15, 2014
In bestseller Box’s solid 15th novel featuring Joe Picket (after 2014’s Stone Cold), the Wyoming game warden faces a crime far too close to home. The sheriff tells him that his foster daughter, April, has been beaten and left for dead in a ditch; Joe’s reaction to the alarming news is an unequivocal “I’m going to kill Dallas Cates,” a dazzling local rodeo champion last seen running off with April. As April lies in a medically induced coma, Joe has to balance his personal crisis with an environmental one: finding the poachers who slaughtered a flock of 21 sage grouse, a species approaching endangered status. Meanwhile, the FBI is tracking the every move of Joe’s old friend Nate Romanowski, who went on the run in Stone Cold. Some of the plot devices stretch credulity, and the dialogue isn’t as crisp as usual, but the story carries the day. Agent: Ann Rittenberg, Ann Rittenberg Literary Agency.