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.
May 25, 2015
The 15th novel to feature Joe Pickett (after Stone Cold) opens with the Wyoming game warden facing the apparently senseless slaughter of dozens of young sage grouse, a problem he quickly moves to the back burner when he’s told his 18-year-old adopted daughter, April, has been found beaten and left to die on a road near his hometown of Saddlestring. Narrator Chandler’s rendition of the book’s expository sections is precise and professionally delivered but unemotional to a fault, undercutting the vivid and propulsive quality of the author’s prose. However, when it comes to bringing the book’s characters to life, Chandler’s Broadway (Death of Salesman) and TV experience (Law and Order) kick in. The wheelchair-bound Sheriff Reed sounds thoughtful and just, a hard man to rile, while prosecutor Schawk is as tightly coiled as Box describes her. Providing Joe with a deep, leading man’s voice, Chandler takes it through a series of emotional changes, from love for his daughter and fear for her safety to full-out fury when he eventually confronts the book’s collection of truly monstrous villains. A Putnam hardcover.