"Cerebral mystery"

In Saddlestring, Wyoming, game warden Joe Pickett and his two daughters are fishing when they see dead fish floating in the water. As they walk the river, he finds a man who is taking the fish for sport and throwing them back in the water. While Joe lectures him about the ethics of what he is doing he smells something rancid. The angler points him in the direction of a dead moose. When he goes to investigate, he finds that the moose was mutilated with surgical precision; his organs removed as if someone took them for a trophy.

Not long after that a call comes in that some cows were killed, just like the moose with no signs of predator or clues to who or what did it. People in Saddlestring are very nervous and property values plummet even though there is an economic boom going on thanks to new technology that allows natural gas to be taken easier out of the ground. When two men are found in the same condition as the cattle and the moose, a task force is formed but Joe goes his own way to find out what is turning his town upside down.

Award winning author C.J. Box has a natural gift for describing the beauty of nature contrasting it to the depravities of man. This is a very cleverly constructed mystery, with many different sub-plots tying back to the main storyline. A touch of mysticism and the supernatural enhance the battle between good and evil and it is judiciously applied so readers will have no trouble believing in it. TROPHY HUNT is must reading for cerebral mystery fans.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted June 12, 2004

Summary

Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett faces his most dangerous adversary yet in award-winning author C. J. Box's thrilling new novel. 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 assault, Pickett begins to investigate what he hopes is an isolated incident. Days later, after the discovery of a small herd of mutilated cattle, Pickett realizes this is something much bigger. Local authorities are quick to label the attacks the work of a grizzly bear, but Joe knows otherwise. The cuts on the moose and the cattle were too clean, too precise to have been made by jagged teeth. Are the animals only practice for a killer about to move on to a different, more challenging prey? Joe's worst fears are realized when the bodies of two men are discovered within days of each other, their wounds eerily similar to those found on the moose and cattle. There's a vicious killer, a modern-day Jack the Ripper, on the loose in Saddle-string-and it appears his rampage is just beginning.