For an author like Chuck Box, it's hard to constantly better yourself when
your first novel wins a whopping four prestigious mystery awards. But when
it comes to murder and mystery in the vast Wyoming Territory, Box makes
every book a long-awaited pleasure.

The author's fourth installment, Trophy Hunt (Putnam, $24.95), takes a very
real incident and runs with it, adding a slice of terror to the mix.
Mysterious and unsolved cattle mutilations have been reported for years.
When a Denver bookstore suggested Box take advantage of a 2001 cattle
incident in Wyoming, he embellished the odd findings with a tale to both
captivate and chill.

Box's hero, Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett, is spending a little quality
time with his two daughters on a fishing expedition. Miles from their truck,
the trio comes across a moose carcass. Not only is the moose dead, it's been
surgically sliced and diced.

Days later, Pickett learns of a rancher's dozen or so cattle being
slaughtered in the same gruesome manner. When he visits the site, Joe's
confronted with his nemesis, Sheriff Bud Barnum. The rotund,
nearing-retirement law dog doesn't want Pickett involved with the carnage,
because the game warden always manages to solve the crimes out from under
the sheriff. Despite Barnum's outrage, the Murder and Mutilations Task Force
is soon formed, of which the two are members. An FBI agent from Box's last
novel, Winterkill, is also on the force; he doesn't like Joe either.

With every conceivable explanation on the table (birds, terrorists, a bear,
and even aliens), Twelve Sleep County is blanketed with an air of paranoia.
The noose is quickly tightened when the next mutilated victims are human. A
rancher's hired hand and a surveyor are both discovered on the same night,
surgically cut, fifty miles apart. The task force has no leads, so Joe
decides to dig deeper, using his friend Nate, a former federal agent, now a
metaphysical woodsman.

Nate tells Joe to look at the mutilations from a different angle. Some may
not be connected, while others might. Pickett interviews roughnecks and
surveyors, real estate brokers and ranchers, plus an odd doctor who believes
"aliens are among us," and his young goth protégé, who sends Joe cryptic
e-mails about her mentor.

On the home life, Joe's wife Marybeth is still adjusting to the loss of a
family member from Winterkill. Her part-time, away-from-home accounting work
is putting a strain on the family. A possible career in real estate is
looming for Marybeth, but the owners of the firm, Cam and Marie Logue, are
beginning to show severe stress marks. And who's the strange man living in
the shack on the outskirts of the Logue's land?

You can mess with the man, but never the man's dog. When Joe's beloved lab
is scared white, the quiet game warden sees red. And no one had better get
in his way.

Trophy Hunt is a choice mystery; spooky, poignant, thrilling and rugged. Joe
Pickett, his wife, and daughters are the best frontier detectives going. See
what the buzz is all about and spend some quality reading time in Big Sky
Country with C. J. Box.

By JC Patterson-special to the CL