Mystery

The recipient of Edgar, Anthony, and Macavity Awards, New York Times best-selling author C. J. Box has won almost every honor in his field. In Breaking Point, Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett is glad to catch up with old friend Butch Roberson, but then the man goes missing and is named a suspect in the death of two EPA employees. All signs point to Butch’s guilt, but the more Joe digs into the case, the more he realizes he’s stepped into the middle of a deadly power play.

Edgar, Anthony, Macavity, Gumshoe, and Barry Award winner C. J. Box’s novels featuring game warden Joe Pickett are full of breathtaking thrills. Cold Wind, the 11th tale in the series, finds Pickett’s mother-in-law suspected of murdering her husband. Pickett cannot stand the woman, and all the evidence is pointing straight toward her. Caught up in an investigation that is already personal, Pickett tries his best to keep things from getting too messy.

It’s elk season in the Rockies, but this year one hunter is stalking a different kind of prey. When the call comes in on the radio, Joe Pickett can hardly believe his ears: game wardens have found a hunter dead at a camp in the mountains – strung up, gutted, skinned, and beheaded, as if he were the elk he’d been pursuing. A spent cartridge and a poker chip lie next to his body. Ripples of horror spread through the community, and with a possibly psychotic killer on the loose, Governor Rulon is forced to end hunting season early for the first time in state history – outraging hunters and potentially crippling the state’s income from the loss of hunting license revenue. But when the brutal murders eerily coincide with the arrival of radical anti-hunting activist Klamath Moore, Pickett knows the Governor’s ruling is the least of his worries. Are the murders the work of a deranged activist or of a lone psychopath with a personal vendetta? As always, Joe Pickett is the governor’s go-to man, and he’s put on the case to track the murderous hunter, as more bodies – and poker chips – turn up.