Game Warden Joe Pickett is a major star in the USA, having already headlined over a dozen cases. His adventures are finally being released properly in the UK at the rate of a title per month. This is chronologically his 10th outing. A gentle, married man with a keen sense of justice, he patrols the Wyoming Mountains and rights wrongs with a passion. The cowboy, with obligatory hat, as modern sleuth.
Joe Pickett's in his last week as the temporary game warden in the town of Baggs, Wyoming, but there have been strange things going on in the mountains, and his conscience won't let him leave without checking them out: reports of camps looted, tents slashed, elk butchered. And then there's the runner who simply vanished one day. Joe doesn't mind admitting that the farther he rides, the more he wishes he could just turn around and go home. And he is right to be concerned. Because what awaits him is like nothing he's ever dealt with, like something out of an old story, except this is all too real and too deadly. When he'd first saddled up, he'd thought of this as his last patrol. What he hadn't known was just how accurate that thought might turn out to be.
C. J. Box is the winner of an Anthony Award, the Prix Calibre .38, the Macavity Award, the Gumshoe Award, the Barry Award and the 2009 Edgar Award for Best Novel. His novels are US bestsellers and have been translated into 21 languages. Box lives with his family outside of Cheyenne, Wyoming.