“The Crossroads” is C.J. Box’s 26th novel featuring Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett. Starting with the opening sentence, readers will get the message that this is not a “normal” Pickett adventure.
Marybeth, Joe’s wife, receives a concerning call from a deputy sheriff asking if she knows where Joe is. She quickly learns that a Wyoming Game and Fish Department pickup truck has been found riddled with bullet holes and a body inside. Her 20-year nightmare seems to finally have come true. Joe has had many close calls during his career, but is this the final one?
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C.J. Box’s new novel, “The Crossroads” is available at Maria’s Bookshop, 960 Main Ave. It’s on preorder until Tuesday.
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The Pickett family lives in Saddlestring, Wyoming, in Twelve Sleep County. Joe is the lone game warden responsible for a vast 5,000 square miles of wild land and animals. Marybeth is a valued community member and in charge of the local library. Many times she has helped Joe with her skills on the internet. These loving partners have three adult daughters.
The oldest, Sheridan, lives nearby and manages Yarak, a business that uses raptors, ie. falcons, to mitigate problem birds for businesses and homes. The business is owned by a family friend who sometimes colors outside the legal lines, Nate Romanowski, while Joe is known for following the rules. The middle daughter, April, works as private investigator in Montana for Cassie Dewell. (Dewell also is a character in another series that Box writes.) The youngest daughter, Lucy, is a college student who just returned from a semester in France.
Joe is found barely alive and is airlifted to Billings, Montana, for critical care because he has been shot in the head. Marybeth joins him on the helicopter to the hospital, where she must make life altering medical decisions in hopes of saving Joe’s life. Meanwhile, the daughters gather at home and determine that they are going to find whoever tried to kill their father.
Joe and his truck were found at Antler Creek Road, a dead end road, which then splits off into private roads that lead to three different ranches. There appears to be no way to tell where he was headed. That important fact might help to determine what could be the motivation for this violent and deadly attack. The girls decide that the ambush location means that one of the ranches must be responsible for Joe’s attack.
One ranch, the Double Diamond Ranch, is owned by a relative newcomer to the area, billionaire Michael Thompson and his young trophy wife, Brandy. Thompson seems to be angling for local support for a new project. The second property, McElwee Land and Cattle Ranch, is owned by two notorious sisters, Lisa and Lainie. Rumors have them involved in shady deals such as poaching and rustling. The last ranch, Bucholz Ranch, is run by John and Shelby. They are known to be unwelcoming and secretive and the ranch has certainly seen better days.
Meanwhile, there is a new sheriff in town. Steve Sondergard hasn’t even had time to unpack the boxes in his new office when he must deal with Joe’s ambush and the apparent arson and death of a hunter. Sheridan, as the representative for the Pickett sisters, tries to enlist the help of Sondergard because they know the locals, but things don’t seem to work in their favor.
Box has created a fascinating and tense mystery where readers learn early on the identity of the men who ambushed Joe. But who hired them and why? Joe is out of action in a coma with severe brain trauma. While Marybeth is continually having to make medical decisions as his condition changes in Billings, their daughters must solve this all important personal case of “who done it?”
Box deftly uses flashbacks from before the shooting where Joe is trying to solve what’s going on at one of the ranches. Then he weaves in Sheridan, April, Lucy, Nate and Steve’s efforts trying to find out who put the hit out on Joe. The twists and turns of the action and the tension of this mystery grab readers’ attention through the final page.
Leslie Doran is a retired teacher and freelance writer.
