Box set for Saratoga

New York Times best-selling author C.J. Box will be signing his books from noon to 2 p.m. Saturday at the Saratoga Museum.

Box, who has two new books out this year, “Breaking Point”, the 13th in his Joe Pickett series, and a stand-alone “The Highway”, worked for the Saratoga Sun and the Chamber of Commerce in the 1980s.

“The Highway” is the scariest book I’ve ever written,” Box said. He got the idea when he was flying around America several years ago on a book tour. He picked up a newspaper someone had left behind and read a story detailing the creation of a “Highway Serial Killer Task Force”. Box said the few factoids mentioned in the story were chilling.

“The FBI claims there are hundreds of missing women throughout the United States, most of them truck stop prostitutes,” Box said. “The murderers were likely long-haul truckers.”

Box said law enforcement officials guessed there were 10 to 15, and possibly more, serial killers currently “working” the nation’s highways. Only one has been caught.

As he did more research the novel began to develop and Box brought back sheriff’s department investigator Cody Hoyt from “Back of Beyond” and his novice partner Cassie Dewell. Together they pursue a highway serial killer known as the Lizard King who may have abducted Danielle and Gracie Sullivan, the sisters from “Back of Beyond”.

Some of Box’s research included secretly joining truck forums on the internet, hitching a ride on a tractor-trailer from Billings to Chicago and interviewing truckers about the secret world of long-haul trucking.

Box said the entire thriller takes place in less than 24 hours and is told from the point of view of Cassie, Cody, Gracie and the truck driver.

“The Highway” was released July 30 and debuted on the New York Times Best Sellers List at No. 7 last week.

The Saratoga Museum is one of the stops on a book tour that started July 30 with the release of “The Highway”. The tour has taken him to Cheyenne, Denver, Boulder, Los Angeles, Phoenix (Scottsdale), Houston, Lexington, Pittsburgh and Portland and Bar Harbor, Maine. The rest of the month, Box will be in Casper, Yellowstone, Cody and Sheridan.

Joe Pickett is a Wyoming Game Warden who lives in the fictitious city of Saddlestring, Wyo., and ends up in some unique predicament in every story. A new Joe Pickett novel, “Stone Cold”, will be out next March, Box said.

In writing his stories, Box said he starts with a theme or issue, builds a plot to it, then pulls the reader through the pages. Box said he constantly draws on his years at the Saratoga Sun and the Saratoga Platte Valley Chamber of Commerce for stories, characters and incidents.

Box grew up in Wyoming and tried to read everything he could about the state and the mountain west. “Except for local history, Wyoming wasn’t known for her writers,” Box said. It bothered him when he read a novel set in Wyoming where everyone seemed to speak in rural Southern accents. It wasn’t the Wyoming he knew. “I wanted to write a book that depicted the culture and landscape of the state in a realistic way.”