Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett returns in this third adventure in C.J. Box's tough, tender, and engrossing series, which just keeps getting better. When a forest service supervisor is murdered right after a manic shooting spree that slaughtered a herd of elk, a mysterious stranger who trains falcons and carries an unusual weapon is arrested for the slaying. Then a special investigative team headed by a devious, vindictive woman arrives in Saddlestring, bent on a bloody confrontation with a group of government-hating survivalists camped out on federal land. Among then is Jeannie Keeley, who abandoned her daughter April three years earlier. Since then, April has become like a daughter to Joe and his wife Marybeth, and a sister to their own children. Now April is right in the middle of what promises to be the last stand for the ragged band of refugees from the firestorms of Waco, Ruby Ridge, and the Montana Freemen, and only Nate the falconer, who owes Joe his life for finding the real killer of the supervisor and freeing him from jail, may be able to save her before the Bighorn Mountains are covered in blood. A tense, taut thriller marked by lyrical renderings of the harsh, beautiful landscape, Winterkill's subtext, as in Box's previous novels, is the conflict between individual rights and freedoms and governmental power that continues to smolder in the towns and valleys of the American west. --Jane Adams

Genre: Mystery