2nd in Joe Pickett series. Have read before, but am reading again. This story is about a hired gun who is going across the country killing high profile environmentalists who are trying to save wildlife, land, and other rights of for good of the ecosystem. Kirkus: In his time, Stewie Woods was the most active environmental activist imaginable. No dirty anti-establishment trick, from spiking timber to disabling bulldozers, was beneath him. So when he and his bride become casualties of an exploding cow, their passing is doubly ignominious. And that?s only the beginning of a series of equally inglorious deaths of tree-huggers. Woods biographer Hayden Powell is found dead drunk in the basement of his burned-out house; Green Congressman Peter Sollito is apparently killed by a hooker who got carried away; wolf-reintroduction advocate Emily Betts crashes her plane and becomes food for her own cargo; bears feast on litigious attorney Tod Marchand. All these silly, grisly stories are only a front, of course, for a homicidal pair of killers who?ve been paid to stamp out environmentalists from Washington to shining Washington. But Stewie?s death in Wyoming?s Bighorn National Forest catches the eye of local game warden Joe Pickett, a man who?s ?not very good about letting things drop? and has the scars to prove it. Starting with Jim Finotta, the hobbyist rancher whose hot-wired livestock made Stewie Woods?s quietus, Joe battles every human power in sight, eventually taking on Mother Nature herself in a bravura high-country chase, in order to make things right.If the bad guys? posturing makes them just a little too obvious from the beginning, Box still displays a gimlet eye for zealots, hypocrites, and poseurs of every stripe, from gentlemen ranchers to squeamish wolf-huggers�proving that Joe?s sizzling debut (Open Season, 2001) was no fluke.

Park ranger finds his life in peril from an extremist for the rights of ranchers and foresters. Very good read.

(2002)1st one of this series that I have read and I think I could like this. Pickett is a park ranger and gets drawn into a war between ecologists and local ranchers that starts with an eco-terrorist seemingly blown up by a cow and followed by a string of murders of people involved in fighting against ranching interests in the west.From Publishers WeeklyBox's second novel offers more graceful writing than his overhyped debut, Open Season (2001), along with a little humor and a more fluid plot line. Wyoming Game Warden Joe Picket is still fallible, his strong sense of duty, honor and justice again running afoul of the greedy villains bent on misusing the exquisite, vividly described landscape. A pair of well-drawn, unconventional hit men, one a conscienceless killer, are murdering environmentalists. First, a powerful explosion blows up "infamous environmental activist" Stewie Woods and his new wife while they're sabotaging logging in the forest near Saddlestring, Pickett's headquarters. The sheriff thinks it was an accident, but Pickett is unsure. Then a pro-environment congressman, a writer, a lawyer and an animal-rights activist all die under questionable circumstances. When Pickett's wife, Marybeth, who grew up with Woods, receives mysterious phone calls from "Stewie," Pickett starts his own investigation. A spectacular chase through a treacherous, isolated canyon with a secret escape route is well paced and riveting. The suspense ratchets up another notch as Pickett and an unexpected ally confront the man who ordered the crimes. The author shows both sides of environmental issues - the activists' insistence on a pristine natural habitat countered by the Westerners' view of the land as their livelihood - and pulls no punches when describing how humans can brutalize one another.

I love a good series. ( )

Sheesh. How stupid can you get? I recall reading a Box novel in the past that was pretty decent, so thought I'd try this one. In this one however, the writer opted for so much ACtion and Drama at the expense of plot errors and nonsense it's idiotic.
I quit not even 20% into it, though I knew I should toss it at the end of the opening, when a Ranger 4 miles from an explosion runs out to look, & sees a tree ascending. Sorry, it takes about 20 seconds for a boom to travel 4 miles, and I'll be generous and say another 10 seconds to jump outside and start looking...but by that time any tree tossed up would already be back on the ground. ( )