Joe Pickett's foster daughter is discovered in a ditch, barely alive. Joe knows who's responsible but there's no proof and his investigation will bring him face-to-face with some truly terrifying opposition.

Joe's eighteen-year-old ward, April, has run off with rodeo champion Dallas Cates. And then comes even worse news: the body of a girl has been found in a ditch along the highway-alive, but just barely, the victim of blunt force trauma. It is April, and the doctors aren't sure if she'll recover. Cates denies having anything to do with it-but Joe's going to find out the truth, even if it kills him. But this time, it just might.

'Why no American TV or film company has ever taken on Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett is beyond me ... C J Box's series, now up to book 15, has everything: twisted, nuanced plots, utterly believable characters, survivalists, psycho mountain tyrants, obsessive civil servants, politicians and lawmen - all quite repugnant - a magnificent setting, bags of action, and, as a total clincher, enough ecology to keep them firmly rooted in the modern world' Crime Review.