Stone Cold (Joe Pickett) by Box, C.J.

11 in stock

217mm x 133mm x 27mm

Pages: 0

Product Description

The electrifying new Joe Pickett novel from the New York Times-bestselling author.

Everything about the man is a mystery: the massive ranch in the remote Black Hills of Wyoming that nobody ever visits, the women who live with him, the secret philanthropies, the private airstrip, the sudden disappearances. And especially the persistent rumors that the man's wealth comes from killing people.

Joe Pickett, still officially a game warden but now mostly a troubleshooter for the governor, is assigned to find out what the truth is, but he discovers a lot more than he'd bargained for. There are two other men living up at that ranch. One is a stone-cold killer who takes an instant dislike to Joe. The other is new'but Joe knows him all too well. The first man doesn't frighten Joe. The second is another story entirely.

From Booklist

Box's last Joe Pickett novel, Breaking Point (2013), left the reader wondering where the story could possibly go next, with Joe having quit his job in disgust at the government. Perhaps Box wondered the same thing: at any rate, the Wyoming game warden has his old job back and is once again on special assignment for Governor Rulon. A mysterious, moneyed landowner is buying up the northeast corner of the state, possibly engaged in murder for hire'and Nate Romanowski, Joe's enigmatic best friend, just might be involved. After the supercharged fury of the last book, this marks a welcome return to the thing Box does best: putting family man Joe in a dicey situation where, despite his orders to merely observe, his own moral code means he can't help but light the fuse and see where it leads. Being in unfamiliar territory is familiar territory for Pickett, and corrupt-town scenarios are as old as the hills, but Box uses the ploys for maximum suspense, and readers won't mind one bit. It's good to see Pickett writing tickets again.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Box is a brand name, and readers would find his books even if they weren't heralded by a national tour and promotional blitz'which, of course, this one is. --Keir Graff

About the Author

C. J. Box is the author of fourteen Joe Pickett novels, most recently Breaking Point, and four stand-alones, and has won the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity, Gumshoe, and Barry awards, as well as the French Prix Calibre .38. He lives outside Cheyenne, Wyoming, with his family.

Excerpt. -¬ Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

1
Fort Smith, Montana
Nate Romanowski pushed the drift boat onto the Bighorn River at three-thirty in the morning on a Sunday in early October and let the silent muscle of the current pull him away from the grassy bank. Eight miles downriver was the fortified and opulent vacation home of the notorious man he was going to kill.
It was twenty-four degrees and steam rose from the surface of the black water in thick tendrils, and he was soon enveloped in it. The craft f loated quietly and he manned the long oars to keep the up- swept bow pointing forward. Gnarled walls of river cottonwoods closed him in, their bare branches reaching overhead from both banks as if to try and join hands. For ten minutes between Third Island and Dag's Run, he couldn't see a damned thing and operated exclusively on feel and sound and experience. He kept to the main channel and avoided the shallows so he wouldn't scrape bottom and could f loat as swiftly as possible.
He'd made the run before in preparation'so many times, in fact, that the rhythm, mood, and temperament of the river was as famil- iar to him as his falcons, his weapons, and his code. Or what was left of his code, anyway, he thought, and grinned bitterly to himself in the dark.
While doing night reconnaissance, he