Joe Pickett
22 primary works • 29 total works
Book 1
As Joe digs deeper, he discovers that the outfitter brought more than death to his back door; he brought Joe an endangered species, thought to be extinct, which is now living in his woodpile. If word of this gets out, it will destroy any chance for InterWest, a multinational company, to build a natural gas pipeline across the state. The closer Joe comes to the truth behind the outfitter murders, the endangered species, and InterWest, the closer he comes to losing everything and everyone he holds dear.
Book 1
Joe Pickett is the new game warden in Twelve Sleep, Wyoming, a town where nearly everyone hunts and the game warden—especially one like Joe who won't take bribes or look the other way—is far from popular. When he finds a local hunting outfitter dead, splayed out on the woodpile behind his state-owned home, he takes it personally. Even after the discovery of two more bodies, and the resolution of the case by local police, Joe continues to investigate.
As Joe digs deeper into the murders, he soon discovers that the outfitter brought more than death to his backdoor: he brought Joe an endangered species, thought to be extinct, which is now living in his woodpile. But if word of this rare species gets out, it will destroy any chance of InterWest, a multi-national natural gas company, building an oil pipeline through the mountains and forests of Twelve Sleep. The closer Joe comes to the truth behind the outfitter murders, the endangered species, and InterWest, the closer he comes to losing everything he holds dear.
Book 3
Book 4
Book 7
Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett hunts a mass murderer in Yellowstone in this thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author C.J. Box.
Joe Pickett’s been hired to investigate one of the most cold-blooded mass killings in Wyoming history. Attorney Clay McCann admitted to slaughtering four campers in a back-country corner of Yellowstone National Park—a “free-fire” zone with no residents or jurisdiction. In this remote fifty-square-mile stretch a man can literally get away with murder. Now McCann’s a free man, and Pickett’s about to discover his motive—one buried in Yellowstone’s rugged terrain, and as dangerous as the man who wants to keep it hidden.
Book 8
It's elk season in the Rockies, but a different kind of hunter is stalking prey in this novel in the #1 New York Times bestselling Joe Pickett series.
Game wardens have found a man dead at a mountain camp—strung up, gutted, and flayed as if he were the elk he'd been hunting. Is the murder the work of a deranged anti-hunting activist or of a lone psychopath with a personal vendetta? Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett is the man to track the murderer and stop him, before someone declares open season on humans...
Book 9
Six years ago, Joe Pickett's foster daughter, April, was murdered. Now, someone is leaving phone messages claiming to be the dead girl. As his family struggles with the disturbing event, he discovers that the calls have been placed from locations where serious environmental crimes have occurred. And as the phone calls grow closer, so does the danger.
Book 10
Book 11
A body hangs from a wind turbine, a bullet hole in his chest: Earl Alden, millionaire property developer. His wife, Missy, is the prime suspect. It wouldn't be a problem for Joe Pickett, if Missy weren't his mother-in-law.
Missy claims she's innocent, and for his wife's sake, Joe would like to believe her... but all the early signs point to her being as guilty as sin.
With his wife on one side and the law on the other, Joe needs to get to the truth before his family is ripped apart.
Book 12
Joe Pickett's outlaw falconer companion, Nate Romanowski, faces the battle of his life and one he may very likely lose. His mysterious past comes back in the form of his former special forces colleague, an utterly ruthless soldier/homeland security official who knows his rise through the military and intelligence community will be derailed if Nate ever tells what he knows about their time together in Afghanistan in 1995.
After years of dispatching fellow special forces team members to take him out, Nate's nemesis decides the time has come to end the threat to him once and for all. And he does it by incorporating many of the same tactics that served their unique and secret unit well in the Middle East: by recruiting locals. Nate can trust no one except Joe Pickett, who is constrained by his oath and duty to the law and the state.
But Nate must involve Joe because he knows his enemy will strike at his friends in order to draw him out and the entire Pickett family will be a target. Because of Nate's fugitive status he can only fight back outside the law, and Joe must make a choice: help his friend or adhere to his principles?
Book 13
Book 14
Everything about the man is a mystery...
No one knows where he came from, how he made his money or what's drawn him to the isolated Black Hills of North Wyoming. His generosity has won the locals over, but are his motives above suspicion?
After a string of disappearances, Joe Pickett isn't the first investigator to pursue this enigmatic millionaire, but will he be the first to leave alive? With winter's first storm closing in, Joe's about to discover there's a stone-cold killer stalking the hills – and he's not alone.
Book 15
Joe Pickett has good reason to dislike Dallas Cates. His eighteen-year-old foster daughter, April, has just run off with him.
Then comes even worse news: April has been found barely alive in a ditch along the highway, and the doctors don't know if she'll recover. Of course, Cates denies having anything to do with it but Joe knows in his gut who's responsible.
The problem is there's no proof.
Joe's going to find out the truth, if it kills him. And, as he confronts the ruthless Cates clan, it just might.
Book 16
There's no hiding off the grid.
Joe Pickett's old friend Nate Romanowski is off the grid, lying low while the FBI search for him. But they're not the only ones looking. Nate finds himself confronted by agents who need his help assessing a potential terror threat in Wyoming's Red Desert - in return they'll make Nate's criminal record disappear. Nate knows they can't be trusted - but with his liberty at stake, he has to comply... for now.
Meanwhile, Joe's heading south, under orders from State Governor Rulon to investigate a rash of crimes and an uptick in secretive federal activity along Interstate 80...
As they pursue their quarries, both men will be drawn deep into the Red Desert, 9,000 square miles of bleak, punishing terrain, home to a secret that could take them both down.
Book 17
The plane circled in the dark. Joe Pickett could just make out down below a figure in the snow and timber, and then three other figures closing in. There was nothing he could do about it. And Joe knew that he might be their next target.
The Cates family had always been a bad lot. Game warden Joe Pickett had been able to strike a fierce blow against them when the life of his daughter April had been endangered, but he'd always wondered if there'd be a day of reckoning. He's not wondering any longer. Joe knows they're coming after him and his family now. He has his friend Nate by his side, but will that be enough this time? All he can do is prepare...and wait for them to make the first move.
Book 18
No motive, no suspect, no trace.
Who doesn't want her found?
Joe Pickett is 300 miles from home, enduring the worst weather January in Wyoming can throw at you.
He's in the small mountain town of Saratoga, on the trail of a British woman who checked out of the remote ranch she was holidaying at and disappeared.
But the missing woman is only the beginning.
Something is not right in Saratoga. Why has the local game warden also disappeared? Why is local law enforcement spooked? Why is the new state governor taking such an interest in the case? Joe will have to find the answers before he too joins the disappeared.
'Terrific plots, muscular writing, unlikely heroes and wild terrain' DAILY MAIL.
'An exemplary writer of crime novels' FINANCIAL TIMES.
Book 19
THE HUNT IS ON.
The good news is that Joe Pickett has his job back. The bad news is that Wyoming's Twelve Sleep County game warden is only days away from the most dangerous predators he's ever faced.
Joe's working with Katelyn Hamm, his counterpart in adjacent Shell County, to trace a drone operator whose aerial acrobatics have been stampeding elk and deer to their deaths. Their investigation will put them both on a collision course not only with the FBI, but also with the Wolf Pack, a remorseless quartet of killers.
Coming up from the south, the Wolf Pack have been tracking their prey across the USA. Behind them, a trail of dead — ahead, their target. They will let nothing will get in their way — especially two game wardens.
'Terrific plots, muscular writing, unlikely heroes and wild terrain' DAILY MAIL.
'An exemplary writer of crime novels' FINANCIAL TIMES.
Book 20
In the new Joe Pickett novel, the Wyoming game warden must investigate an attempted assassination on his own turf...
Wyoming's Twelve Sleep County is shaken when a would-be assassin takes aim at a local judge. Their shot narrowly misses, severely wounding the judge's wife. All local law enforcement officers – including game warden Joe Pickett – are called in to track down the shooter.
The shot appears to have been taken from an almost impossible distance. Inevitably, the Feds' first suspect is ex-special forces operative, Nate Romanowski. The only way Joe will be able to prove his friend's innocence is by finding the real shooter.
Meanwhile, a startling grizzly attack in the next county draws Joe across the border to join the rescue efforts. But something in the victim's account isn't adding up, and Joe suspects all is not as it appears...
Beset by threats both man-made and natural, Joe Pickett must go to great lengths to keep his loved ones safe and solve an impossible crime in the riveting new novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author C.J. Box.
Book 21
#1 New York Times bestseller C.J. Box returns with a new Joe Pickett novel.
THE TIME HAS COME
It's a crisp October morning in Wyoming's Twelve Sleep County, and game warden Joe Pickett should be keeping watch over his patch. Instead, the state governor has roped him into leading Silicon Valley billionaire Steven Price on a hunting trip. The department is facing major budget cuts and Price's social media empire could bring serious business into the state – if someone can persuade him of Wyoming's charms.
It looks like a straightforward job, but unbeknownst to Joe, there is a hunter hot on their heels, one with a different manner of prey in mind.
When Joe's daughter Sheridan and his closest friend Nate Romanowksi learn of the threat, they head out to rescue Joe and his charge. To get out of the woods alive, they will all have to draw on their wits and knowledge of the outdoors as they confront the worst man – and nature – can throw at them.
Praise for C.J. Box:
'Heart-stoppingly good' Daily Mail
'Solid-gold A-list must-read' Lee Child
'I love Joe Pickett' Michael Connelly
'Exhilarating... Gung-ho stuff' Sunday Times
'Box is an exemplary writer of crime novels' Financial Times
Book 22
Don’t miss the JOE PICKETT series—now streaming on Paramount+
A day before the three Pickett girls come home for Thanksgiving, Joe is called out for a moose-poaching incident that turns out to be something much more sinister: a local fishing guide has been brutally tortured and murdered. At the same time, Marybeth opens an unmarked package at the library where she works and finds a photo album that belonged to an infamous Nazi official. Who left it there? And why?
She learns that during World War II, several Wyoming soldiers were in the group that fought to Hitler’s Eagles Nest retreat in the Alps—and one of them took the Fuhrer’s personal photo album. Did another take this one and keep it all these years? When a close neighbor is murdered, Joe and Marybeth face new questions: Who is after the book? And how will they solve its mystery before someone hurts them…or their girls?
Meanwhile, Nate Romanowski is on the hunt for the man who stole his falcons and attacked his wife. Using a network of fellow falconers, Nate tracks the man from one city to another. Even as he grasps the true threat his quarry presents, Nate swoops in for the kill—and a stunning final showdown.