Winterkill (Joe Pickett Novels (Paperback))

Rating:
Summary: Emotional
Review: This is a much more emotional story than we usually find
in the mystery field. Most readers will at one time or another
practically shout out, "leave the guy alone." The author
so fully developes his characters that you feel for all of them
as hero Joe Pickett works on multiple problems in his job as
a Wyoming game warden, and he tries to balance demands of
that job with his awesome responsibilities as a husband and father.
Plus, the writer has such descriptive powers that most readers
will be able to feel that cold Wyoming wind, and we can almost
feel ourselves sinking into those deep snowdrifts as we trudge
through the winter country, seeking answers to those multiple
problems.
The problems start when Pickett finds a USFS manager killing
multiple elk, for no apparent reason, and shortly after an arrest is
made, that government employee is chillingly murdered in bizarre
circumstances, and Pickett is left with more questons than answers. Then a BLM employee is lured into a truck mishap
and left to die in the cold.
But the problems really blow up when an inexperienced "task
force" leader shows up, and she bulls her way into the investigation with threats and bombast, and her ego-driven
"leadership" causes the whole mess to expand and start to spin
out of control.
We can only hope the US Forest Service hasn't declined as much
as the author suggests in this story, but that may be wishful thinking, because there is ample evidence that the great federal
land-management agencies have been taken over by issue-driven
bureaucrats, whose agendas don't include much consideration for
the people who actually use the resources they purportedly manage for the benefit of the many.
But Box apparently knows his subject matter, because the whole
story, with all the side issues, rings true. He writes in a way that
we can, and do, believe in the personality clashes and resource
mis-management he describes.
He is a very capable writer, and this story is both gripping and
full of truths we can understand and relate to.
Get yourself into this story and see how difficult it is to put down
before the finish.

Rating:
Summary: Joe Pickett gets a sidekick, maybe
Review: This is the third book in the Joe Pickett series, and unconventional is the rule in each of the books. The author manages to make a character with a wife and kids into something of an action hero, complete with gun, pickup truck, and dog, and a series of enemies that attempt everything from annoyance to murder to thwart him.

In the current book, Pickett has a murder on his hands. In this case the murder is complicated by the fact that the victim was a local Federal wildlife officer who just went nuts and killed a whole flock of elk. Pickett arrested him, but he escaped, only to be brutally and strangely killed.

Complicating things are two factors. First, the local authorities have been preempted by a Federal investigator who has taken charge of everything. She's convinced that there's a conspiracy of right-wing nutcases, survivalists who want to kill Federal agents, and of course she's going to hunt them down, damn the consequences. One of her principle suspects is a local mountain man type who has almost no interaction with the rest of society, and raises falcons at his house. That guy turns out to be more than everyone bargained for.

I enjoyed this book a great deal, and would recommend it to anyone who likes the wilderness or detective stories. One proviso: the author isn't a conservative politically (one of his previous books involves the Endangered Species list) but this book deals with the Federal government and bureaucrats rather harshly. Just a warning.