Reviews for Wolf Pack

by CJ Box

Publishers Weekly
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

When game warden Katelyn Hamm observes a herd of elk being stampeded by a drone in Edgar-winner Box's excellent 19th novel starring Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett (after 2018's The Disappeared), she enlists Joe's aid in tracking down the drone's owner. It turns out to be Bill Hill, who lives with several bodyguards in an upscale compound. After Hill scoffs at being fined by Joe for tormenting the elk, Joe tries to research Hill online, only to find him devoid of any background history. Meanwhile, Joe's old friend Nate Romanowski offers to take down the drone with his trained falcons, and Nate's falcon attack on the drone leads to a pair of arrogant FBI agents warning first Hamm and then Joe not to hassle the drone owner again, on pain of prosecution. But when dead bodies begin turning up showing clear signs of torture, Joe realizes that his county has been infested with something far more dangerous than a drone: a team of professional killers, sent by a Colombian cartel to eliminate a witness. The action-packed final quarter of the book ranks among Joe and Nate's best and bloodiest confrontations. Box is the king of contemporary crime fiction set in the West. Author tour. Agent: Ann Rittenberg, Ann Rittenberg Literary. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.


Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Fired after his last colorfully insubordinate outing (The Disappeared, 2018), Wyoming Fish and Game Warden Joe Pickett is back on the job in Twelve Sleep County just in time to follow the trail from a routine misdemeanor to a quartet of hired killers.Katelyn Hamm, Joe's counterpart in Shell County, is saddened and angry to see a herd of terrified mule deer fleeing, some to their deaths, from an unregistered drone aircraft that disappears in the direction of Twelve Sleep County. This isn't the first time locals have spotted the drone, and Katelyn wants Joe to track down its owner. Joe obligingly traces the rogue aircraft to the compound of Bill Hill, who gets him just as furious as Katelyn by freely admitting the offense, crumpling up the citation Joe gives him, refusing to follow him to the sheriff's office, and assuring Joe that he'll never have to answer the chargeand that Joe himself will be in trouble if he presses too hard. Trouble promptly arrives in the form of two FBI agents from the nation's capital who warn first Katelyn, then Joe, off the case, which they consider no big deal compared to the threat against thousands of lives"maybe tens of thousands.Maybe millions"they're handling but refuse to identify. Meanwhile, four professional killers, including a particularly fatal female, are headed to Twelve Sleep County from Arizona, where they've just killed their latest target, his wife, and a friend who happened to have stopped by. Squeezed between the feds and the Wolf Pack, a murderous arm of the Sinaloa drug cartel, Joe will himself be targeted, along with Katelyn, the FBI agents, the local sheriff, his wife's best friend, and his own friend the outlaw falconer Nate Romanowski, for elimination before the killers can move on to their real target.It's obvious where all this is going, but Box gets you there, in one of most tightly wound tales, with more thrills than a snowy road on a steep mountain and more authority than the governor of Wyoming. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.


Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett, last seen in The Disappeared (2018), has his old badge and district back, a brand-new pickup truck, and is happy to be out in the field tracking an illegal trapper. Across the mountains, a colleague has an uncomfortable encounter with a drone that is spooking wildlife. As they track the violators, they have no idea they're about to collide with aggressive FBI agents and a Sinaloa cartel hit squad that's about to unleash a shocking level of violence in Twelve Sleep County. Joe's old friend Nate Romanowski may be back on the grid, running a business and actually planning for the future, but Joe's going to need Nate's killer instincts this time. As always, Box takes familiar elements of his long-running series the upstanding Joe, the renegade Nate, a daughter in danger (this time it's Lucy), and a threat from outside and seamlessly combines them into a read that makes your heart race, even though you won't leave the couch until you've turned the last page. Half mystery, half thriller, totally worthwhile. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: You can just about set your watch by a Joe Pickett novel in March; the number-one-best-selling author's legion of fans will be counting down the minutes.--Keir Graff Copyright 2019 Booklist

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