Joe Pickett

There’s nothing unusual about the sound of a gunshot in Twelve Sleep. In remotest Wyoming, where elk roam the pine forests and cougars prowl the mountains, everyone owns a gun. But when Joe Pickett hears two sharp cracks ring out months before hunting season, it’s his job to investigate. As game warden, dad-of-two Joe is not only badly paid and poorly housed, he’s deeply unpopular. So when the source of the shots – a well-known poacher – gets off scot-free, the locals are delighted. And then the poacher turns up dead in the Picketts’ back yard.

Wyoming Game Warden Joe Pickett is called to a bizarre crime scene deep within the forests of Twelve Sleep County. Famous eco-activist Stewie Woods has been killed in an explosion, along with his new bride and ten head of cattle. The case is wrapped up far too quickly: an environmental publicity stunt gone wrong. But what is the millionaire rancher who owned the cattle hiding? And why is Joe’s wife Marybeth receiving mysterious phone calls from someone claiming to be Stewie Woods?

It’s an hour away from darkness, a bitter winter storm is raging, and Wyoming Game Warden Joe Pickett is deep in the forest near Battle Mountain: shotgun in his left hand, his truck’s steering wheel handcuffed to his right – and Lamar Gardiner’s arrow-riddled corpse splayed against the tree in front of him. Joe knows that Lamar’s murder and the sudden onslaught of the snowstorm mean he should get off the mountain. But he also knows this episode is far from over.

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 or whoever attacked the animal was ruthless: half the animal’s face has been sliced away, the skin peeled back from the flesh. Shaken by the sight, Joe starts to investigate what he hopes is an isolated incident.

A good friend and fellow game warden of Joe Pickett's has killed himself, and Joe's been chosen to temporarily run his district. But Jackson, Wyoming, is a far cry from Joe's hometown of Saddlestring, and it doesn't help that Joe feels compelled to investigate the circumstances surrounding his friend's suicide. The closer Joe comes to the truth, the more his own life spirals out of control - and he realizes that if he isn't careful, he may be Jackson's next victim...

When local ranch owner and matriarch Opal Scarlett vanishes under suspicious circumstances, Joe Pickett grows convinced that her family are responsible. In her absence, two of her sons, Hank and Arlen, battle for control of their mother's multi-million-dollar empire. The whole town is so caught up in the infighting that they seem to have forgotten that Opal is still missing.

Joe Pickett, having recently been fired from his job as a Wyoming game warden, is working on his father-in-law’s ranch when he receives a call. Governor Rulon - a devious but down-home politico - has a special request. Clay McCann, a lawyer who slaughtered four campers in cold blood in a far-off corner of Yellowstone National Park, had immediately turned himself in at the nearest park ranger station - except that the crimes were committed in a thin sliver of land with zero residents and overlapping jurisdiction, the so-called free-fire zone.

It’s elk season in the Rockies, but this year one hunter is stalking a different kind of prey. When the call comes in on the radio, Joe Pickett can hardly believe his ears: game wardens have found a hunter dead at a camp in the mountains - strung up, gutted, skinned, and beheaded, as if he were the elk he’d been pursuing. Governor Rulon is forced to end hunting season early for the first time in state history - outraging hunters and potentially crippling the state’s income from the loss of hunting license revenue.

'Tell Sherry April called.' That simple phone message shakes Joe Pickett’s oldest daughter Sheridan and the rest of the family to the core. To Joe, it doesn’t seem even remotely possible that April could have survived the massacre six years before. He was there, and he was unable to save her. But Sheridan starts to believe there’s a chance that April is still alive, and her suspicions are confirmed when the person sending texts to her cell phone is able to recall family incidents only April could know.

Joe Pickett’s in his last week as the temporary game warden in the isolated town of Baggs, Wyoming, but there have been strange things going on in the surrounding mountains, and his conscience won’t let him leave without checking them out: reports of camps looted, tents slashed, elk butchered. And then there’s the runner who’s gone missing – an Olympic hopeful who’d been training in the region and then just ... vanished.

When Earl Alden is found dead, dangling from a wind turbine, it's his wife, Missy, who is arrested. Unfortunately for Joe Pickett, Missy is his mother-in-law, a woman he dislikes heartily, and now he doesn't know what to do - especially when the early signs point to her being guilty as sin. But then things happen to make Joe wonder: Is Earl's death what it appears to be? Is Missy being set up?

In 1995, Nate was in a secret Special Forces unit abroad when a colleague did something terrible. Now high up in the government, the man is determined to eliminate anyone who knows about it, and Nate knows exactly how he'll do it – by striking at Nate's friends to draw him out. The entire Pickett family will be a target, and the only way to fight back is outside the law. Nate knows he can do it, but he isn't sure about his straight-arrow friend – and all their lives could depend on it.

Butch Roberson was known by all as a local business owner, a hard worker, and a family man. Then he disappeared, leaving two dead bodies in his wake. Now he's known as a murderer - though Joe Pickett cannot believe someone as gentle as Butch could have the instincts of a killer.

Everything about the ranch is a mystery. Rumours abound about the millionaire who owns it, the women who live with him, and the sudden disappearances. Joe Pickett is tasked by the governor to find the truth. There are two other men living up at the ranch. One is a stone-cold killer who takes an instant dislike to Joe. The first man doesn't frighten him. But the second is another story entirely.