BLOOD TRAIL
By C.J. Box

Booklist (starred review):

In January, Box branched out from his popular Joe Pickett series with a stand-alone thriller, Blue Heaven (2008). His publisher for that book seems to be pushing him toward a broader audience—even ditching his familiar black Stetson in the author photo. Longtime fans might have wondered whether Pickett would soon be an also-ran. But there’s no need to worry just yet. Although Blood Trail is a mite slimmer than its predecessors (two books a year will do that to a writer), Box is clearly still comfortable in the saddle. And his game warden—now a special agent reporting directly to the governor—is still as dogged on the trail as he is hard on government-issued vehicles. There’s a little less family time for Joe, but there are some interesting developments in his friendship with the enigmatic Nate Romanowski. Joe needs Nate’s help and some luck besides, because it’s elk season, and someone is hunting elk hunters. And with a flamboyant anti-hunting activist coming to town with his supporters, it’s looking like another classic standoff: implacable ideologues on both sides and a pondering Pickett caught in the middle. Box always addresses a New West issue, but there’s something great about the way he’s waited until the eighth installment to tackle the one that would seem most obvious, given his hero’s occupation. We prefer Box with the cowboy hat, but whether hatted or bareheaded, he continues to be red hot—and now there’s twice as much of him to go around.

Library Journal:

When a hunter is butchered in Wyoming, game warden Joe Pickett and his boss, Randy Pope, set off to investigate. Soon, it becomes clear that someone is systematically killing hunters. Caught between the people who hunt and those who are opposed to hunting, not to mention facing one of the most dangerous cases of his career, Pickett must find a way
to bring the killer to justice before more deaths occur. Award-winning mystery writer Box ratchets up the suspense in this tightly plotted example of his writing genius, his eighth thriller to feature Pickett. His sense of place and talent for character development are on a par with those of James Lee Burke. Highly recommended.

Kirkus Reviews:

Wyoming Game and Fish Warden Joe Pickett (Free Fire, 2007, etc.), once again at the governor's behest, stalks the wraithlike figure who's targeting elk hunters for death.

Frank Ulman was taken down by a single rifle shot, field-dressed, beheaded and hung upside-down to bleed out. (You won't believe where his head eventually turns up.) The poker cjip found near his body confirms he's the third victim of the Wolverine, a killer whose animus against hunters is evidently being whipped up by anti-hunting activist Klamath Moore. The potential effects on the state's hunting revenues are so calamitous that Governor Spencer Rulon pulls out all the stops, and Pickett is forced to work directly with Wyoming Game and Fish Director Randy Pope, the boss who fired him from his regular job in Saddlestring District. Three more victims will die in rapid succession before Joe is given a more congenial colleague: Nate Romanowski, the outlaw falconer who pledged to protect Joe's family before he was taken into federal custody. As usual in this acclaimed series, the mystery is slight and its solution is eminently guessable long before it's confirmed by tesitmony from an unlikely source. But the people and scenes and enduring conflicts that lead up to that solution will stick with you for a long time.

More of a western than a mystery, like most of Joe's adventures, and all the better for the open physical clashes that periodically release the tension beteen the scheming adversaries.

Publishers Weekly:

When an elk hunter is shot and gruesomely gutted in Box’s solid eighth Joe Pickett novel (after 2007’s Free Fire), Wyoming governor Spencer Rulon assigns Joe to the investigative team headed by Joe’s nemesis, game and fish director Randy Pope. The authorities suspect a group led by antihunting activist Klamath Moore, but Joe thinks an enigmatic clue near the body points to a serial killer. As usual, Joe stands alone against official protocol, placing his career and life in peril by following his hunches. He persuades Rulon to release his pal, iconoclast Nate Romanowski, who’s awaiting trial on spurious charges, to help him on the case. Writing beautifully about the mountain West and its people, Box takes care to present both sides of the controversial issue of hunting. The narrative alternates between the searchers and the killer, whose identity will keep readers guessing up to the surprising climax.

Madison County Herald:

A common greeting heard during hunting season in the Rockies is "Got your elk yet?" This year's kill is strung up, flayed, gutted, beheaded and on display in a secluded hunting camp in Wyoming. Only this kill is human.

Bestselling author C.J. Box tops himself with every novel in the game warden Joe Pickett mystery series. But Blood Trail (Putnam, $24.95) cuts a whole new path of death and suspense never trod upon before.

Ex-warden Pickett returns from last year's Free Fire, set in Yellowstone National Park, to a new neighborhood far from the peace and solitude of the mountains. After his untimely firing two books back, Joe has been ranch foreman for his overbearing mother-in-law's current rich husband. Now he's the new governor's go-to guy when things heat up in the woodland territories.

Things don't get any hotter than the sickening display Joe and authorities are led to at the camp. Near the body's remains lies a mysterious poker chip. The psycho killer must be found at all costs or the governor will be forced to shut down Wyoming's hunting season. Joe knows the lay of the land. But he has to share duties with a world famous tracker, bumbling local cops, and bureaucratic red tape.

Meanwhile, animal rights activist Klamath Moore is in the area to shine a light on the brutal murder. Or is Moore a part of the plot to shut down the "slaughter" of animals?

Things go from bad to very, very bad when an accident and a double homicide change the course of the investigation. Things get personal as Joe swears vengeance for an old friend. Pickett's pal, mercenary and falconer Nate Romanowski, incarcerated at the end of Free Fire, is released into Joe's custody to try and catch the killer. But Nate has his own agenda. Now Joe must investigate odd leads while tracking down the elusive Nate and activist Klamath Moore.

Box incorporates Wyoming's Native American tribes and the anti-hunting controversy that threatens a way of life in the West. The killer walks in plain sight in a mist of misdirection as the naive yet relentless ranger Pickett gets ever-closer to the crosshairs of his own demise. Dogged by his boss, harassed by the governor, scrutinized by the FBI and local law, Joe Pickett faces his toughest trial ever in Blood Trail. Box's finale is harsh and unpredictable with a finish you won't see coming.

The Joe Pickett series reads way too fast, making me dread the year-long wait for another potent visit to the beautiful and treacherous Rockies.

Cleveland Plain Dealer:

C.J. Box brings back Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett in Blood Trail (Putnam, 301 pp., $26.95) and in doing so, shows why he has pretty much sewn up the state as his own territory. Pickett, a devoted if often bewildered husband and father, would just like to do his job, but life, and politics, are never going to make it easy.

In fact, Pickett has been fired as game warden, but when a gutted, strung-up and flayed hunter is found in a mountain camp, the governor wants Pickett on the case. Throw in anti-hunting forces, political treachery that makes the animals look like the civilized ones, obnoxious neighbors, a growing daughter, and once again, Pickett can barely stay afloat.

But we know our Joe. Better, Box knows what readers expect and delivers it with a flourish.

Nashville Scene:

Kinsey Millhone. Hamish Macbeth. Stephanie Plum. Dave Robicheaux. Bennie Rosato. Rumpole of the Bailey.

All are fictional detectives whom fans savor, whether the heroes happen to be detecting in the first, fifth or 23rd installment of a given series. (No lie: There are currently 23 Hamish Macbeth novels in the Scottish series by M.C. Beaton, three more than Sue Grafton’s Millhone, who has thus far solved her alphabetic way through the letter T.) All mysteries pretty well share the same plot: dead body, multiple suspects, rising danger. Within these confines of the genre, what makes some detectives remain not only fresh, but refreshing, book after book?

In Joe Pickett, outdoor enthusiast C.J. Box may have hit upon the right mix of character, locale and profession. In Blood Trail, the eighth novel of the series, the erstwhile game warden—currently suspended and acting as a special assistant to the governor—is on the track of a serial killer who is picking off game hunters in Wyoming’s Bighorn Mountains, threatening not only lives, but a multimillion-dollar tourism industry as well. Pickett embodies many elements shared by other successful series detectives. He holds a job that, while allowing him a reasonable excuse to solve crimes, is at the same time unusual enough to be interesting in and of itself: its methods, tools, bureaucracy and (often petty) internecine conflicts. The job is practiced in a richly evoked locale, accurately presented with the style of a consummate travel writer. And the recurring characters who surround the detective—whether as comic relief or long-term nemeses—are sharply drawn and evolve from book to book.

Consider Box’s description of Joe Pickett’s office, which is, like that of any other game warden, his pickup truck: “He’d been living in it for the past month, and it showed. The carpeting on the floorboards showed mud from the clay draws and arroyos near Lusk, the Little Snake River bottomland of Baggs, the desert of Rawlins, the Wind River foothills out of Pinedale. There was a gritty covering of dust on his dashboard and over his instruments. The console was packed with maps, notes, citation books. The skinny space behind his seat was crammed with jackets and coats for every weather possibility, as well as his personal shotgun.... The large padlocked metal box in the bed of the vehicle held evidence kits, survival gear, necropsy kits, heavy winter clothing, tools, spare radios, a tent and a sleeping bag. Single cab pickups for game wardens with all this gear was proof that whoever it was in the department who purchased the vehicles had never been out in the field.”

Pickett, unlike his Machiavellian former boss, Randy Pope, is at home in the field, much like his creator. Often photographed in a black cowboy hat, Box—who goes by Chuck—bares a passing resemblance to country singer Garth Brooks and is a former ranch worker and small-town journalist. Like his game warden, he also has worked intimately with state government, as the operator of a marketing firm business that coordinates international travel with the state travel departments of Wyoming, South Dakota, Montana and Idaho. Earlier this month, the real Wyoming governor, Dave Freudenthal, gave Box a “Big Wyo” tourism award for his work with the firm. More to the point, Box’s unusual résumé allows him to combine Hemingwayesque wilderness writing with an insider’s eye of statehouse politics and institutional spin doctoring.

In Blood Trail, the spin doctoring is as furious as the action. An anti-hunting guru, media darling Klamath Moore, capitalizes on the gruesome murders of hunters to spread his political message. Meanwhile, the state imports an international mercenary “master tracker” to find the killer, with predictably disastrous results. It is once again up to Pickett to head for the mountains and clean up the mess. As in Hemingway’s best hunting and fishing narratives, the brutality of the natural world is best understood in contrast to the brutality of the so-called civilized world. In a passage that could have been written by Papa himself, for example, Box describes Pickett’s philosophy on the handling of a fresh kill: “He valued those who shot well and took care of their game properly. This involved field dressing the downed animal quickly and cleanly, and cooling the meat by placing lengths of wood inside the body cavity to open it up to the crisp fall air. Back limbs were hung by the legs from a tree branch or game pole. The game carcass was then skinned to accelerate cooling, and washed down to clean it of hair and dirt. The head was often removed as well as the legs past their joints. It was respectful of the animal and the tradition of hunting to take care of the kill this way.”

Of course, in this case, the prepared kill Pickett discovers is human. His efforts to link the seemingly random victims uncovers—as mystery aficionados know it will—unsavory past acts and conspiracies. The action moves ever more quickly through the Rockies toward a final confrontation, advancing the lives of familiar Box characters while introducing new ones.

“A thriller is like a shark,” Box once explained. “It needs to always be moving forward. If it stops, it dies.”

Joe Pickett seems poised to move forward for some time to come.