Is nature striking back... or is a serial killer on the loose?
It's an idyllic late-summer day in Saddlestring, Wyoming, and Game Warden Joe Pickett is fly-fishing with his two daughters when he stumbles upon the mutilated body of a moose. Whatever attacked the animal was ruthless: half the animal's face has been sliced away. Shaken by the sight, Joe starts to investigate what he hopes in an isolated incident.
Soon, more animals are attacked. Local authorities are quick to label the rash of mutilations as the work of a grizzly bear, but Joe suspects something far more sinister. And when the similarly disfigured bodies of two men are found, his worst fears are confirmed: a modern-day Jack the Ripper is on the loose - and the killings have just begun.
C. J. Box is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of 24 novels including the Joe Pickett series. He won the Edgar Alan Poe Award for Best Novel (Blue Heaven, 2009) as well as the Anthony Award, Prix Calibre 38 (France), the Macavity Award, the Gumshoe Award, two Barry Awards, and the 2010 Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association Award for fiction. He was recently awarded the 2016 Western Heritage Award for Literature by the National Cowboy Museum as well as the Spur Award for Best Contemporary Novel by the Western Writers of America in 2017. The novels have been translated into 27 languages.
Box is a Wyoming native and has worked as a ranch hand, surveyor, fishing guide, a small town newspaper reporter and editor, and he co-owns an international tourism marketing firm with his wife Laurie. They have three daughters. An avid outdoorsman, Box has hunted, fished, hiked, ridden, and skied throughout Wyoming and the Mountain West. He served on the Board of Directors for the Cheyenne Frontier Days Rodeo. Box lives in Wyoming.