It's tough being a Wyoming game warden. Fifty-five underpaid game wardens patrol the entire 97,000 square miles of land. Within their district, they work virtually alone, with no backup, "supervised" by a distant boss who contacts them occasionally by telephone, radio or e-mail.

But the job of Joe Pickett, the Wyoming game warden who makes his third appearance in C. J. Box's new mystery, "Winterkill," is even tougher, because it invariably involves murder. Even the county sheriff asks why Joe is around "every time someone gets murdered in my county."

The victim this time is Lamar Gardiner (contemptuously known locally as "Elmer Fedd") a U.S. Forest Service supervisor who's responsible for imposing new land restrictions that have angered many local citizens. As with "Savage Run," Box's second novel (2002), "Winterkill" opens with a unique murder method — a body pinned to a tree by two arrows piercing its chest.

Besides locals angered by Gardiner's regulatory style, the suspects include a band of activists camping close by. Known as the "Sovereign Citizens," their members include Montana Freemen and Branch Davidians, survivors of the Ruby Ridge and Waco confrontations.

Gardiner's murder attracts to the little town of Saddlestring (with its three traffic lights, two radio stations and one weekly newspaper) a swarm of federal officials, including Melinda Strickland, the paranoid leader of a special Forest Service investigative team, and a vicious FBI agent who was also at Ruby Ridge. They are followed closely by reporters looking for exclusive angles and personalities to promote.

But Joe's problems don't end there. One of the Sovereigns is Jeannie Keeley, the birth mother of April, the foster child that Joe and his wife are trying to adopt. Although Jeannie abandoned April three years earlier, she has a court order returning custody of April to her, and she plans to enforce that order by whatever means she can.

In short, it's a volatile mix of unscrupulous and ambitious people with conflicting agendas and powerful emotions. Perfect for a contemporary mystery culminating in an explosive climax.

Box, a Wyoming marketing executive, uses the plot to explore an issue important to Westerners — how the federal government's ownership and often heavy-handed management of large swaths of land in the Western states can lead people to establish their own "independent nations," proclaiming that the government is illegal and holds no authority over them. And the subplot involving April allows Box to probe the issues of parental rights, child abandonment and foster care, exploring what happens to the child when seemingly correct policies conflict.

Joe Pickett has been called a "modern-day Gary Cooper," and he is a flawed man of few words who's not afraid to follow his instincts, speak his mind and tackle tough issues and tougher bad guys, while staying connected to his family. But while Gary Cooper eventually resolved his problems, Joe always needs someone else to bail him out, and these novels suffer from that flaw. Secondarily, many of Box's villains are two-dimensional, and need some virtues to make them more realistic.

Box clearly knows the Wyoming landscape, and his descriptions of trees, ridges, wind and snow can make the reader shiver. And his effective use of an intensifying winter storm as a metaphor for the escalating action adds to the reader's enjoyment.

Joe Pickett is a character that a reader can enjoy spending time with, and the issues raised are close to home and provocative. C. J. Box continues to get better with each book he writes.

Chuck Brownman is a Boulder attorney and mystery writer. By Chuck Brownman, For the Camera
May 24, 2003

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