"Joe Pickett investigates as hunters become the hunted in the eighth instalment of this thrilling series."
As you may expect by now, in the eighth of a series following Wyoming Game Warden Joe Pickett, hunting takes centre stage in this tense new thriller. But this time the target isn’t big game. The story opens on a hunt, the practised stalk becoming more sinister as we realise this is the voice of our killer. When Joe Pickett takes the call that a hunter has been killed, field dressed and hung like an elk, it puts the rest of the hunting season in jeopardy and levelling a massive blow to the state. Is the killer part of the anti-hunting crowd, now amassing among the media frenzy, or someone with a more personal vendetta?
We meet some familiar faces from previous books, their connections to Joe are explained but better explored by reading the rest of the book in the series. Although having said that Blood Trail holds its own perfectly well as a standalone. C. J. Box creates a rugged, untamed Wyoming landscape that calls to characters and readers alike. It's the perfect backdrop for him to masterfully build suspense, cutting away or killing off key people at just the wrong (or right) time to keep us from getting a grasp on the case. The perspective changes grant us access into the mind of our killer, offering a faint trail of cryptic clues to follow as we track down the hunter of hunters. The answers kept eluding me right up until the frenzy of climatic perspective shifts in the final chapters. Blood Trail is an energised thriller with plenty of bite and a worthy trophy for any thriller reader’s shelf. I look forward to seeing what the next hunting season brings.
| Primary Genre | Crime and Mystery |
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