Game warden novels, and one with a faith thread

There’s a small shelf of novels about the people who protect wild places. If you’ve found it, you’ve probably read everything on it.

C.J. Box’s Joe Pickett books follow a Wyoming game warden, starting with Open Season. Nevada Barr’s Anna Pigeon mysteries send a park ranger to a different national park in each book. Both series understand something most crime fiction misses: out there, the officer is often alone, a long way from backup, and most of the people he meets are carrying a rifle for a perfectly legal reason.

Poacher’s Moon belongs on that shelf.

Wade Holloway is a game warden in Hollis County, on the North Carolina side of the Blue Ridge. He’s a former Force Recon Marine. He reads sign the way other men read the paper: a scrape in the leaves, the wind coming up the hollow, a single brass casing somebody missed in the dark. When a black bear turns up gutted below Tanner Gap, it looks like one more poacher. Then a nineteen-year-old who saw too much turns up dead at the bottom of Laurel Fork gorge, and Wade has to work out what kind of man is behind it, and what kind of man he is himself.

What’s different

There’s a thread underneath this one. Wade isn’t sure anymore what he believes, and the book doesn’t treat that as a small thing. It’s a thriller first, so it moves. But it’s also the story of a man God hasn’t given up on.

If you’d rather your fiction left faith out entirely, this probably isn’t your book, and that’s fine. If you’ve ever wished the books you love had room for it, it might be.

Where the details come from

I grew up hunting and fishing in upstate South Carolina, and a lot of the wildlife officers who worked those woods were my dad’s friends. I learned early what the job asks of the men who carry that badge. That’s the ground Wade is built on.

You can read the opening chapter free on Amazon before you buy.