This is book 8 of the "Joe Pickett" series.

This note contains spoilers for the book.

I'm still in the process of reading this book.

Still working for the governer as a troubleshooter, Joe is assigned to work on the latest in a series of hunting "accidents". People are starting to think they may not be accidents, that instead there may be a serial killer stalking hunters in the Wyoming wilderness.

The fact that the latest one was field-dressed and hung in a tree to cool contributes considerably to this change in thinking.

Reading the reports and asking questions about the previous two killings brings to light more similar features than people thought, including a particular red poker chip showing up at each of them (local sheriffs at two sites ignored or tried to downplay this, for no apparent reason; in general these books do not treat local law-enforcement kindly).

The reader gets an unfair advantage, since the first chapter is from the POV of the killer, and we know for damned sure no accident was involved. We also get his POV some later. I'm starting to think that the particular targets are not unrelated, and are certainly not random.

Meanwhile, a national anti-hunting activist is coming to town to exploit these murders for his cause. An obvious question, which the characters haven't yet asked themselves, is whether this is in fact a coincidence, or not. Anti-hunting extremist public activist, anti-hunting extremist killer? Unrelated coincidence?

(One thing the anti-hunting activist annoys me by ignoring is the way animals are treated in factory farming and meat-processing.)