Maybe you think you've lived your whole life without knowing what life might be like in a place called Saddlestring, Wyoming and that's okay with you. Saddlestring is in the Twelve Sleep Valley --- for which Twelve Sleep County is named --- and even in the dead of winter, it's a place that people like Jackson Hole tourists never get to see.

Well, guess what? If that's what you thought, then you were mistaken and C.J. Box can prove it to you in one night. He can probably do it with any of his books, but so far I've read only his latest, WINTERKILL. Certainly I'll soon be looking for the previous two, OPEN SEASON and SAVAGE RUN, in paperback.

Joe Pickett is a game warden. He works alone in a remote, mountainous, heavily wooded area of Wyoming. His job is 1/3 public contact, 1/3 field collection and 1/3 law enforcement. The government provides his house, which includes a small office and his long-bed pickup truck. The tools of his trade are a few rifles and a field telescope mounted on the side of the truck. Oh, and a handgun he'd rather not have to use because he's a poor shot with it. And Maxine --- but Maxine is a yellow Labrador retriever, the family pet when she's not riding around in the truck with Joe.

It is four days before Christmas, the first big winter storm is coming, and Joe has been watching a herd of elk move down the mountain to graze. In Joe's territory, hunting is legal --- it's even encouraged within the law --- and there are many people who depend on the meat from elk and deer to make it through the winter. Most hunters respect the animals and each other, but on this day, something goes horribly wrong. Elk are slaughtered, and so is a man. And the storm moves relentlessly in.

The local sheriff takes over the murder investigation, which gets off to a slow start due to the storm's severity; during the delay, a U.S. Forestry Service official arrives and all but takes over the investigation. The victim was the local Forest Service employee, an entrenched bureaucrat who made arbitrary decisions about things like road closures that affected people's lives daily. So the victim was heartily disliked by many, but only one man was seen coming down the mountain near the time of the murder and he is arrested as quickly as the weather allows. The official sent by the Forestry Service is a woman, trailed by a magazine reporter doing a feature story; the reporter is attractive but the woman is a heartless power-grabber. So Joe Pickett wonders what she is doing in the high country of Wyoming in the Twelve Sleep Valley, which is kind of an outpost beyond which lies the Point of No Return.

On the same day that the elk and the man were slaughtered up on the mountain, in the town of Saddlestring, Joe's three children have watched as a caravan of campers, trucks and odd-assorted vehicles with license plates from several different states drives through town. Then on Christmas Day, many of these vehicles are parked outside a little church whose congregants previously numbered perhaps six. Joe, who is not convinced the sheriff is holding the right man in the jail for murder, sees this passing by and leaves his family in the car while he checks on the situation in the church. The minister tells him that the people --- all of whom are strangers to this small community --- have set up a winter camp on public land outside of town. Their group is composed of survivors of places like Ruby Ridge and Waco, including two children orphaned in the Waco fire. These people claim to be innocents who have banded together for mutual support and protection, but in their numbers there is one woman with a bad past --- she's the abusive mother of Joe's foster daughter, previously absent for three years. He and his wife are both fiercely determined to protect the girl whom they've been trying to adopt.

Joe Pickett is something rare in the world, and in current fiction. He's a family man who just wants to do the right thing. He loves his wife and daughters. He tries to be polite to his mother-in-law, even though she seems to be suddenly living with them, unexpected and uninvited, in their small house. Joe likes to cook pancakes for breakfast and chili (with elk meat) for supper. He'd rather be at home than anywhere else. But he also has a clear moral compass --- and he will follow his own course wherever that compass leads.

The most remarkable thing about WINTERKILL is the way C.J. Box pulls you into Joe Pickett's world so thoroughly, so immediately, that you will neither want to leave it nor care to remember your own world until you've finished the book. You can read it in one night or a couple of days at most --- but what you've read will stay with you far longer. This is an author with something important to say, letting his characters do it for him. His books add a new dimension not just to mysteries, but to the whole literary scene in our country. WINTERKILL is a must-read.

--- Reviewed by Ava Dianne Day