"...one of the best new voices in the mystery game."

Westerners and lovers of things Western, rejoice - there's a new book out by Wyoming writer C.J. Box, and it's a doozy.

Opening with the mysterious murder of a widely unloved Forest Service official, the plot quickly gyrates into a full-fledged thriller, Wyoming style. That means there's lots of wind and weather - fantastically harsh snowstorms and serene mountain landscapes - and plenty of big guns, rugged action and slightly or very out-of-whack characters of the type that seem to thrive out here. This novel comes on like a Rocky Mountain blizzard and won't let you walk away.

Box excels at presenting Western issues and people, giving us the big picture rather than a media stereotype. In Winterkill, he takes on the survivalist outsiders left over from Waco, Idaho (and who knows where else) and shows us that they are, in some cases, ordinary folks with real grievances against the feds and not just hard-core nut cases - although that's part of it, too. They take things into their own hands with disastrous results. And, of course, the government officials in question are just the sort we love to loathe.

While Box's wonderfully soft-spoken game warden Joe Pickett figures out who's killing the local feds, his foster daughter disappears with her real mother, giving a bitter poignancy to what would otherwise be a typical butt-kicking, gun-blasting mystery story.

Winterkill proves that Box, winner of Anthony and Macavity awards for his first novel Open Season, is one of the best new voices in the mystery game.

Jane Dickinson