Starred review from April 20, 2009
Edgar-finalist Box's ninth novel to feature Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett begins with a bombshell: could Pickett's foster daughter, April, who apparently died six years earlier in a horrific conflagration when overzealous FBI agents confronted a group of dissident survivalists (see 2003's Winterkill
), still be alive? Pickett's 17-year-old daughter, Sheridan, begins receiving disturbing text messages from someone claiming to be her dead sister, and Pickett's entire family is forced to relive the tragedy. Even worse, whoever is sending these messages is traveling cross-country with suspected serial killers targeting people whose carbon footprint is too high. Still struggling with the guilt of not protecting April from her nightmarish fate in Winterkill
, Pickett vows to save her this time, no matter the cost. Powered by provocative themes of environmental activism, this relentlessly paced powder keg of a thriller could be Box's best to date. Author tour.
April 15, 2009
Wyoming Game Warden Joe Pickett (Blood Trail, 2008, etc.) is at it again.
Six years ago, April Keeley, the abandoned girl the Pickett family had taken in, died in a fiery shootout with allies of her irresponsible, litigious mother. Or did she? Suddenly Sheridan Pickett is getting text messages from someone who claims she's April, full of family details only April could know. Initially as skeptical as his daughter, Joe becomes convinced that April is alive but in grave danger once more. He'd been even more frantic if he knew that after a long string of dead-end foster homes, the 14-year-old had been rescued from a Chicago brothel by David"Stenko" Stenson, a gangster determined to show some kindness before cancer killed him, and Stenko's son Robert, a rabid environmental activist obsessed with forcing citizen polluters to buy carbon offsets, often at gunpoint. Box spices Joe's pursuit of the fast-moving Stensons and their unwilling companion with Joe's obligatory tangles with the governor's office, the FBI and his much-married mother-in-law. Basically, though, the tale is a tug-of-war between two father-figures over a young woman who isn't the daughter of either one.
Though one of Box's plot twists pays off in spades, most of them don't, and the latest round of Joe's unending domestic troubles reads like soap opera. Despite incidental pleasures, this is the weakest of Joe's nine cases to date.
(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)
Starred review from April 15, 2009
What would you do if a loved one began text messaging you after her death? Is someone playing a bizarre hoax on the Pickett family? Sheridan, Joe Pickett's older daughter, begins receiving text messages from someone saying she's April, the foster child killed in the Waco-style raid six years earlier (as recounted in "Winterkill"). "April" seems to be a hostage of a deranged ecoterrorist and his father, and they're headed straight for Wyoming. Once again, game warden Pickett plunges into the middle of a topical environmental issue, putting his and his girls' lives on the line. Wyoming's immense spaces make a fitting background for another tense thriller, with the iconic Devils Tower holding court over a frantic chase through the tangled back roads of the Black Hills. Box's series is the gold standard in the western mystery subgenre ("Blood Trail"), and his latest is just as addictive as the others. [See Prepub Mystery, "LJ" 2/1/09.]Teresa L. Jacobsen, Solano Cty. Lib., Fairfield, CA
Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
April 15, 2009
The hardworking and best-selling Box has been on a two-book-per-year pace of late, alternating his popular Joe Pickett novels with stand-alone thrillers. After a rare misstep in Three Weeks to Say Goodbye (2009), Box returns with a Pickett adventure that marries the fast pace and ensemble approach of the stand-alones with the thematic concerns and reliable cast of the series. It starts when the Wyoming game wardens teenage daughter, Sheridan, receives a text message with a staggering implication: that April, the foster daughter thought dead in Winterkill (2003), is still alive. If it really is April whos texting, shes in danger, and for Pickett, the only thing worse than losing her the first time would be losing her again. Pickett must negotiate FBI politics, recruit his fugitive friend Nate Romanowski, and take a crash course in cell-phone-tracking technology to find her. The environmental theme, always part of a Pickett novel, is global warming, and while Box gets at it in a surprising way (the title doesnt mean what you think it means), the discussion isnt as nuanced as weve come to expect. The book is, however, a successful blend of the two things Box does best and seems likely to bring fans of the terrific stand-alone Blue Heaven (2008) to this very fine series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)