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Michele Ross
Authors of long-running mystery series must do some tricky balancing. They can take risks, which can be invigorating -- or irritate the readers. They can keep writing the same reliable books, which can be safe -- or bore the readers. Here are three masters who have tried both ways and almost always get it right...
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.
Ross is a critic in Atlanta.
To reach Michele Ross:
Distinguished Speaker Series
Notre Dame Educational Center
13000 Auburn Rd.
Chardon, OH 44024
http://www.geauga.lib.oh.us/
Country Junction
2742 Highway 130
Centennial, WY 82055
(307) 745-3318
Join C.J. Box for the annual Christmas in Centennial...
Jacksonville Public Library Foundation
Main Library
303 N. Laura Street
Tel. (904) 630-1606
http://www.muchadoaboutbooks.com/
Debuting at #26 on the New York Times Best Seller List in it's first week...A Booksense Notable Pick for June
Four weeks on the extended New York Times bestseller list...Optioned for film by producers Michael Besman ("About Schmidt") and Cameron Lamb...
This break-out novel from the author of the New York Times Bestselling Joe Pickett novels is "a non-stop thrill-ride…a provocative suspense novel that has you rooting for the characters every step of the way." -- Harlan Coben
A twelve-year-old girl and her younger brother go on the run in the woods of North Idaho, pursued by four men they have just watched commit murder—four men who know exactly who William and Annie are, and who know exactly where their desperate mother is waiting for news of her children’s fate. Retired cops from Los Angeles, the killers easily persuade the inexperienced sheriff to let them lead the search for the missing children.
J. W. Keeley is a man with a score to settle. He blames one man for the death of his brother: Joe Pickett. And now J.W. is going to make him suffer.
Game Warden Joe Pickett returns in a twisting, action-packed tale of greed, power, and murder. And meat.
This time, I wanted to write a mystery. Of course, the previous Joe Pickett novels are considered mysteries, or thrillers set in the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming.
WINTERKILL is one of the TOP TEN MYSTERIES OF 2003 according to Oline Cogdill of the South Florida Sun Sentinal: "Few mystery authors who use the environment as a plot foundation are as even-handed an
Laconic Joe Pickett returns to his slightly offbeat duties in Wyoming's Bighorn Mountains in C. J. Box's Savage Run.
In advance reviews, Open Season has been pronounced "something special," (Booklist), and it lives up to the billing. It is not C.J.
