Below Zero (A Joe Pickett Novel) [Hardcover]

C. J. Box (Author)

Book Description

Series: A Joe Pickett Novel | Publication Date: June 16, 2009

Award-winning and national-bestselling writer C. J. Box returns with a vengeance in this thrilling new novel featuring Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett.

Below Zero begins with an unassuming phone message: "Tell Sherry April called." But Sherry-Joe Pickett's oldest daughter, Sheridan-and the Pickett family are shaken to the core. April, Pickett's foster daughter, was killed in a horrific murder and arson spree six years prior. To Joe, it doesn't seem even remotely possible that April could have survived the massacre described in Winterkill. He was there. But Sherry starts to believe there's a chance that April is still alive; the girl on the other end of the phone is able to recall family incidents that only April could know.

Joe, however, remains suspicious, especially when he discovers that the calls have been placed from locations where serious crimes have occurred.

At the same time, an older man and a much younger girl cross the country. The man is on a mission to repent for the crimes he's committed against the environment during his lifetime. He ultimately wants to offset each incident until he not only becomes carbon neutral, but actually drops below zero- as if he's never existed. As the path of these travelers starts to intersect with the Pickett family's, the question is raised: Is this young girl April-or are Joe and his family the victims of the cruelest of hoaxes?

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Edgar-finalist Box's ninth novel to feature Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett begins with a bombshell: could Pickett's foster daughter, April, who apparently died six years earlier in a horrific conflagration when overzealous FBI agents confronted a group of dissident survivalists (see 2003's Winterkill), still be alive? Pickett's 17-year-old daughter, Sheridan, begins receiving disturbing text messages from someone claiming to be her dead sister, and Pickett's entire family is forced to relive the tragedy. Even worse, whoever is sending these messages is traveling cross-country with suspected serial killers targeting people whose carbon footprint is too high. Still struggling with the guilt of not protecting April from her nightmarish fate in Winterkill, Pickett vows to save her this time, no matter the cost. Powered by provocative themes of environmental activism, this relentlessly paced powder keg of a thriller could be Box's best to date. Author tour. (June)
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From Booklist

The hardworking and best-selling Box has been on a two-book-per-year pace of late, alternating his popular Joe Pickett novels with stand-alone thrillers. After a rare misstep in Three Weeks to Say Goodbye (2009), Box returns with a Pickett adventure that marries the fast pace and ensemble approach of the stand-alones with the thematic concerns and reliable cast of the series. It starts when the Wyoming game warden’s teenage daughter, Sheridan, receives a text message with a staggering implication: that April, the foster daughter thought dead in Winterkill (2003), is still alive. If it really is April who’s texting, she’s in danger, and for Pickett, the only thing worse than losing her the first time would be losing her again. Pickett must negotiate FBI politics, recruit his fugitive friend Nate Romanowski, and take a crash course in cell-phone-tracking technology to find her. The environmental theme, always part of a Pickett novel, is global warming, and while Box gets at it in a surprising way (the title doesn’t mean what you think it means), the discussion isn’t as nuanced as we’ve come to expect. The book is, however, a successful blend of the two things Box does best and seems likely to bring fans of the terrific stand-alone Blue Heaven (2008) to this very fine series. --Keir Graff

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Putnam Adult; 1 edition (June 16, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0399155759
• ISBN-13: 978-0399155758
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (47 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #197,021 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

C. J. Box is the author of the award-winning Joe Pickett series of novels, including Open Season (2001), Savage Run (2002), Winterkill (2003), Trophy Hunt (2004), Out of Range (2005) and the upcoming In Plain Sight (May, 2006). He's the winner of the Anthony Award, Prix Calibre 38 Award (France), the Macavity Award, the Gumshoe Award, the Barry Award, and an Edgar Award and L.A. Times Book Prize finalist. Open Season was a New York Times Notable Book and three of the novels have been Booksense 76 picks.


The novels have been national bestsellers and have been translated into 12 languages.


Box is a Wyoming native and has worked as a ranch hand, surveyor, fishing guide, a small town newspaper reporter and editor, and he co-owns an international tourism marketing firm with his wife, Laurie. An avid outdoorsman, Box has hunted, fished, hiked, ridden, and skied throughout Wyoming and the Mountain West. He serves on the Board of Directors for the Cheyenne Frontier Days Rodeo.


Box lives with his family outside of Cheyenne, Wyoming.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 9th Pickett Novel Introduces a Unique Idea for a Killer, October 11, 2009

By 

James N Simpson (Gold Coast, QLD Australia) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Below Zero (A Joe Pickett Novel) (Hardcover)

Below Zero is a sequel to Box's third Joe Pickett novel Winterkill. Well it's a sequel to 7 others as well, but the ending of those ones isn't given away as Winterkill's plot is in Below Zero. So I'd highly recommend reading that one first, in fact, I'd suggest reading the whole series in order which starts with Open Season. Their order is at the bottom of this review. All can be read as standalone reads, but once you've read one, you'll want to read them all so you might as well read them in order and experience Pickett's family grow and his career, well not really grow but you'll experience it's ups and downs.

In Below Zero, a school boy now living in the Pickett family's old home, trying to impress Joe's daughter, passes her mobile number onto a mysterious caller. That caller will shortly after text Sheridan claiming she is April, a foster sister who the family thought was dead. Meanwhile Joe posted to the outskirts of the state for his past actions (read the former novels) is out to apprehend after rescuing a victim, the Mad Archer, a particularly grade A environmental lowlife, who seems to enjoy shooting arrows into wildlife and leaving them to die. When Joe learns of the texts to his daughter, he immediately takes personal leave and rushes back, set to do whatever he can to find out if April is April, which doesn't seem likely. When he learns the girl claims she is travelling with two men who are doing bad things such as killing people (unbeknownst to Pickett killing in the name of reducing carbon footprints of those who substantially pollute with no regard for the planet), he is determined to rescue her this time round.

1. Open Season (2001)
2. Savage Run (2002)
3. Winterkill (2003)
4. Trophy Hunt (2004)
5. Out of Range (2005)
6. In Plain Sight (2006)
7. Free Fire (2007)
8. Blood Trail (2008)
9. Below Zero (2009)
10. Nowhere to Run (2010)

If you've read all the Joe Pickett novels, I'd also suggest the author Ben Rehder. Buck Fever is book one in a series of adventures set in Blanco County Texas with a very similar character to Joe Pickett in game warden John Marlin who could practically be his twin separated at birth and sent to Texas.

36 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Time to return to the basics of the Joe Pickett series, August 5, 2009

By 

Michael Langmaid "Michael Langmaid" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Below Zero (A Joe Pickett Novel) (Hardcover)

I have read all the Joe Pickett novels in sequence. I am finding that the most recent ones need a greater infusion of reality. Below Zero has all kinds of contemporary touches: cold hospitals that seem more interested in insurance coverage than the patient's recovery, carbon footprints and the death of Planet Earth, abused foster-care children, text messaging, and survivalist cults. They cannot rescue, however, a lame, contrived, and unbelievable plot. Box has done much better.

Action has to come from motivation and motivation has to come from character. The villainous father-son duo were not credible. We've all read of dysfunctional family dynamics, but this is one time when fiction is stranger than reality. Another reviewer got it right when writing that Carl Hiasen has done this kind of madcap picaresque much better because he does it with wit, irony, and insight.

I also agree with another reviewer that the Pickett family dynamics are getting tired and tiresome. It's time to send Sheridan and Lucy off to college. They now impede the narrative. We got the point long ago that Joe Pickett is an old fashioned, decent and loving family man.

As Joe Pickett's actions have gotten more and more displaced from game wardening, there has been a loss of what first made Box such a fresh and engaging author. The Wyoming and Western landscape and culture have been central characters in his best writing. I found the early part of this book that dealt with wildlife and the outdoors to be the most engaging along with those sections where Nate Romanski appears.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars April, in peril, is, April 24, 2010

By 

Blue in Washington "Barry Ballow" (Washington, DC United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Below Zero (A Joe Pickett Novel) (Mass Market Paperback)

Wyoming game warden/detective Joe Pickett gets a jolt early in this entertaining novel when his family receives a cellphone text-message purportedly from long dead step-daughter April Keeley. Pickett witnessed April's death in a shootout between a survivalist cult and law enforcement some six years earlier, and has borne a heavy burden of guilt ever since. Helpless to intervene in that tragic event, he is driven to get to the bottom of the mysterious text message and sets off on a chase that will eventually involve two bizarre serial killers, force him into a working partnership with a long-time FBI nemesis and reunite him with frequent ally and fugitive falconer Nate Romanowski. The pursuit of his erstwhile daughter is littered with bodies, hostages and a couple of red herrings. The plot is more than a little over-the-top at times and may be too much for some readers, but author C.B. Box does have a talent for keeping a story going and providing enough surprises to maintain even a skeptical reader's interest. Box also comes up with an imaginative, bang-up ending that sets up the next installment of the Pickett series.

The author has a lot to say about issues of local and/or national interest in his books. In the case of "Below Zero", radical environmentalists, survivalists and out of control weapon freaks. Some of this works well as a backdrop for the book's action, some of it goes a bit too far into fantasyland and detracts from the action. In any event, this novel has some excellent writing and a very original story line that make it engaging and entertaining.


This was my second encounter with Box's writing--a later book, "Nowhere to Run", being the first. I prefer "Nowhere..." for its terrific action and more credible characters and plot. Both books have made me a committed C.B. Box fan and I will continue to read backward into the series and to watch for new installments of the Joe Pickett saga.