Three-Inch Teeth by C. J. Box

Steve Thomas: C.J. Box, welcome back to Circulating Ideas!

C. J. Box: Thank you for having me back. I appreciate it.

Steve Thomas: So your latest novel, Three-Inch Teeth, is out the day that this episode comes out, February 27th. It’s the 24th book in the Joe Pickett series, and before we get into the book itself, how do you work to make a series fresh, not only for readers, but for yourself? How do you get back to these characters over and over again?

C. J. Box: Well, I think there’s two answers to that question. One, the series takes place in real time. The very first book, Open Season, Joe Pickett’s oldest daughter Sheridan is seven years old, and much of the book is told from her point of view, and over the length of the series, she and her sisters have all grown up and left the house, and because everybody is aging in real time and changing, hopefully in realistic ways, that keeps it fresh for me. The situations are not static.

But also, these are not necessarily “Whodunit?” books. They all have to do with issues or controversies or things of interest to me and happening in the Wyoming and the Mountain West, and because each one is about different issues, that keeps it interesting for me. Each book is not about the most diabolical “Whodunit?” I can come up with, but straightforward Joe Pickett taking on some new issue each time. In this case in Three-Inch Teeth, a rogue grizzly bear.

Steve Thomas: Yes, and a number of other human monsters as well.

C. J. Box: That’s right. That’s right.

Steve Thomas: So just in case listeners are new to the series, can you give us a quick rundown on Joe Pickett and the world around him?

C. J. Box: Sure, Joe Pickett is a Wyoming game warden. In real life, there’s 51 of them in the state of Wyoming. They all have their own districts that they patrol, and they’re there to enforce game and fish regulations, but because the state’s very rural, in real life and also in the books, Joe Pickett gets involved in a lot of situations that are not simply handing out tickets to people without a fishing license. He’s heavily armed. He’s kind of autonomous in the area. And like I say, because Wyoming is largely rural, he and real game wardens tend to get involved in other cases, other situations, other investigations besides simply enforcing game and fish regulations.

Steve Thomas: Yeah, hopefully they don’t have to deal with the stuff that’s in this book as often.

C. J. Box: Yeah. Although in real life they do to some degree. There really is a Predator Attack Team made up of game and fish personnel and that attack team is like a SWAT team that arrives on the scene of a bear human fatality or mauling, either to capture the bear and relocate it, or to kill it if it’s totally out of control.

Steve Thomas: Has that been a recent issue of more grizzlies getting out into human population areas, has that become more of a thing in recent years?

C. J. Box: Yeah, in the last five years or so, there have been more and more what they call human-grizzly encounters. Not this year, but the year before, there were at least three fatalities, hunters in this situation, and one of those three, the attack was entirely unprovoked. It was a elk hunting guide near Jackson. They had knocked down an elk and the two bears attacked out of the woods, literally without provocation and went straight for the guide and killed him, father of five, and when the Predator Attack Team arrived, the grizzly bears actually attacked the helicopter. It’s very rare when these things happen to that degree, but they have happened.

Steve Thomas: Yeah, you mentioned a couple times in the book, there’s a character in there that’s the grizzly expert that’s filling Joe and the readers and other characters in, and they mentioned that, that that’s a rare thing that they usually, like most wild animals, don’t want anything to do with humans, want to stay out of their way, but occasionally there’s just a snap and once they’ve attacked a human, that’s where they are now.

C. J. Box: That’s right. Most grizzly bears will do all they can to avoid humans. But once they do cross that line, there’s no way to predict what they’ll do next and whether or not they’ll continue to attack and kill. In the case that I was mentioning earlier with the elk hunting guide, those bears came after the people who came after them, and when the bears were autopsied later to see if there was some kind of disease or brain tumor or something, it showed that the bears were perfectly normal. And so therefore, it’s an unexplained instance.

Steve Thomas: What kind of research did you do on grizzlies for this book?

C. J. Box: I was able to do long form interviews with not only a member of the Predator Attack Team who was on the scene of several of these, but also the supervisor in Wyoming, a Large Carnivore Supervisor for the state. He is on the ground at the scene of every grizzly bear attack or fatality so he’s experienced a lot of very strange grizzly bear behavior. He’s also kind of a public spokesman for the game and fish department, going out telling people how to avoid encounters like that, the best you can. He was very helpful when it came to talking about grizzly bears and their behavior and their patterns.

Steve Thomas: Was there any specific incident that made you decide to make this the theme of this book?

C. J. Box: Well, two things. One is the fact that there have been a number of fatal attacks in the last few years. So every outdoorsman who goes outside has that in the back of their mind that that could happen at any time.

The other is an incident, just kind of a weird experience I had several years ago. I was driving through Yellowstone Park from Jackson to Cody. It was about 6:30 in the morning and outside of my window of my car, I could see a grizzly bear running alongside the car, keeping up with it, knocking trees down, roaring, and it spooked me to no end. The place I was going was actually a conclave of game wardens, an international group of game wardens. I was speaking there. And I spoke to a bear expert who knew the bear and said, “Yes, that was number 118. She lost all of her cubs this Spring in a car accident and she’s gone crazy.” And that stuck with me certainly having seen that and seeing how a bear can behave unnaturally like that.

Steve Thomas: I think you were able to probably use that fear you had yourself and describe that very well, of almost every character, whenever they’re thinking about actually interacting with it, or when they’re seeing a victim, it’s like that fear inside of like, ugh.

C. J. Box: That’s right. That’s right. We’re all fascinated by bears, most people are, I am, but when you think about it, 350-400 pound animal with four-inch claws and three-inch teeth that can run as fast as a freight train, that will keep you up at night.

Steve Thomas: Wow. Can you talk a little bit about the inspiration behind the Mama Bears group, and how groups like that can often be harmful and not be helping even the cause that they think that they’re championing?

C. J. Box: Sure. I mean, it’s a fictionalized group. There’s no real Mama Bears, but there are, no doubt, there are animal rights activists who key on grizzlies. There are some grizzlies in Wyoming that are almost celebrities. They’re known to people by their number. It’s a big deal every year when they come out of their dens and how many cubs do they have this year? They’re loved, they’re well loved, and there’s certain people that spend as much time as they can observing those celebrity bears and they, like all people, everybody who has pets, knows that we often tend to attribute human characteristics to animals. These people tend to do that with grizzly bears, and in real life several of the activists have interfered with the pursuit of grizzlies who’ve attacked people because they’re well-meaning, they want to save the bears, but by taking the investigators off track, that opens the door to additional attacks.

Steve Thomas: Oftentimes, the investigators themselves would rather not have to be doing this, I mean, they love the animals as well, but it’s sort of kill or be killed situation at a certain point.

C. J. Box: And of the officials I’ve talked to who were involved in dispatching grizzlies because of attacks, none of them wanted to do that. They would much rather find a reason for why the bear attacked and relocate them than shoot them. But in some cases, it can’t be avoided.

Steve Thomas: Especially like you said, those unprovoked ones. It’s, like, maybe if you were already shooting at them and then they turned around and went, “Hey, you’re shooting at me!”

C. J. Box: Or the classic case is someone who inadvertently or just not paying attention walks between a sow grizzly bear, and her cubs. That’s often the result of an attack, and it’s understandable. That kind of grizzly bear is probably not going to be shot.

Steve Thomas: When the Mama Bear stuff’s coming up, I think you describe the atmosphere out in the rural areas very well of having people from the outside come in and try to tell people around there of how things go. Does that reflect your real life experience there, that people are coming just in their off time and vacationing, but then they don’t understand actually how the world works there.

C. J. Box: Certainly. I mean, in real life, I try to reflect what I see and what I encounter and what I hear people talking about because they’re contemporary books, but since the pandemic, there has been a population boom in the rural West. People moving from cities and places that they consider inhospitable or dangerous, to the West. And sometimes with misperceptions about what wilderness and wildlife is like.

Steve Thomas: Especially the guy, I’m blanking on his name now, that Sheridan goes to clear out the birds, the guy was wearing all black cowboy outfit, that obviously got at a fancy store or something and is just trying to play cowboy basically.

C. J. Box: Right, and there is a lot of that. And I’ve dealt with that since the very, very first books about what it’s like for people to come into an area with preconceived notions and try to inflict those on the local populace.

Steve Thomas: Yeah, you get that a lot when Joe’s mother-in-law comes to visit.

C. J. Box: Yeah, that’s right, that’s right.

Steve Thomas: So we haven’t talked very much about the other threat that’s almost a bigger threat in the book, and it’s a character coming back, him and his family have been in and out. So Dallas Cates, I don’t think this is a spoiler, it’s on the jacket copy, from previous books has come back, and he’s got personal agendas going on. So what’s happened with him? And what’s his beef this time around?

C. J. Box: Dallas Cates is a former rodeo cowboy, a champion rodeo rider, who is a pretty bad guy comes from a strange family outside of Saddlestring where Joe Pickett lives. Joe Pickett, with the local DA and judge and other law enforcement people in earlier books, kind of participates in trumped up charges against Dallas Cates in order to get him off the street and put him away, and Joe has always felt some remorse and regret for crossing his ethical line to do this. Even though he knows this guy’s a bad guy, he can’t pin the worst things on him. And in this book, Dallas Cates is getting out of prison, and Dallas Cates feels like Joe Pickett, as well as the other five people that he has tattooed on his skin, have not only ruined his life, but wrecked his family, resulted in his loss of reputation and property, and his only mission in life is to go after the people who wronged him. And Dallas Cates uses the bear attacks as cover to go after his list.

Steve Thomas: Yeah, and I don’t want to go too much into that because I want people to be able to read the book and figure out how he does all of that, but he does assemble his own odd little group of people together to go put together this way of pretending grizzly attacks and uses that for cover. How did you come up with that little Motley Crue?

C. J. Box: Oh, that’s a tough one to answer other than several of the members of that group had to have, at least one in particular, an expertise in creating a device that could replicate the attack of a bear. So it kind of went from there and then there’s another bad guy who simply has the same list in mind, and he aligns with Dallas Cates to take people out.

Steve Thomas: Also there are a few characters, one right at the very beginning, the very first chapter and then a little later on some more who don’t make it out of the book, and these are regular supporting characters that have been around and readers have loved. Is it difficult for you when you get to that point with a character that like, for the story, this character’s got to die. I can’t do this story without it. Is it hard for you to do that? Like, do you try to think of ways around it so you could keep them around?

C. J. Box: Sure, I always internally debate that. Sometimes that debate is with my wife, who reads the first manuscript, saying, “Oh man, what did you do?” But I think it’s important for the series, for readers, to know that no one is ever safe, to not make the assumption that everybody’s going to sail through and continue on to the next adventure when you know that things can happen to beloved characters. I think it increases the tension of the books overall. And I know it does upset some people at times, but I like to be surprised like that when I’m reading and, so I try to incorporate that in the books for realism, but also for sometimes just shock value.

Steve Thomas: I don’t know how much you think ahead in the series, but especially the death at the beginning, I won’t even say what that one is, that has personal ramifications across many of the characters as well, because they’re closely related to them. Like, were you thinking about that already a couple books back, or is it just, this is how this character’s gonna react to this, because this character is gone now?

C. J. Box: I wish I had a much smarter answer for you than I do, but the fact is I tend to not look ahead at all. I don’t start thinking of the next book till the book I’m working on is done. Sometimes I leave some threads that I can pick up later, but I don’t plot it out over a large narrative into the future because I think that readers can pick up what what is being left out. If a writer is leaving things out for a later date, I think that becomes obvious to the reader, and I don’t think that’s fair. I think it’s better to put everything into every book and then figure out what happens next.

Steve Thomas: Sheridan is in this book a lot as well with her work as a falconer. Have you done a lot of research on falconers? It’s not just her, but with Nate and their family as well. Is that something that you’ve done a lot of research on?

C. J. Box: I have. I’ve spent time with falconers. People always ask who different characters are based on. The only one in the books based on a real person is Nate Romanowski, based on a friend of mine who was a couple years ahead of me in high school. He went on to Air Force Academy and then to Special Forces and he was a falconer. I used to go falconry hunting with him and I met a bunch of other falconers through him who are all a very odd, interesting, eclectic group with their own rituals and view of the world. So I got to spend a lot of time with falconers, and I still meet falconers like on book tours and other places. No one has ever said I got it wrong, let me put it that way. They like the character, they like the way falconry is portrayed, and they do appreciate the fact that falconers just have a different outlook on the world than everyone else.

Steve Thomas: Yeah, and you said you got invited to a Game Warden meeting, too, so I assume that that profession is pleased enough with how you portray what they do.

C. J. Box: I think everybody in every profession wants their profession to be portrayed well in books and for the most part, until Joe Pickett was on the scene, there weren’t really any books about game wardens. There’s now been several, several good series, so that’s been kind of fresh. Game wardens are thought of differently depending on what part of the country they’re in. I’ve spoken to people in some Southern states that just refer to them as “fish cops.” They’re not considered law enforcement necessarily. Whereas in the West, they definitely are.

Steve Thomas: Even though Joe often has clashes with the other law enforcement in the area. So you’ve been writing for a long time and you’ve got the 24 books in this series, plus you’ve got another series and some other standalone things. How has your writing changed, do you feel like, since you started writing?

C. J. Box: Not that much. I mean, the methodology I used for the first novel, Open Season, is still kind of the one I use today where I start with the contemporary issues or controversies or storylines and research them, and they can deal with energy development or environmentalism, wildlife issues, outdoor ethics, big topics. And then once I think I understand the topic, then I think of how can I pull a reader through this topic in a page turning way? So I do a bullet outline, I do the research, I do just an outline ahead of time, and then I start writing on top of the outline. And that’s still how I do things.

I think where I’ve kind of refined it after so many books is that I know now what should have happened by so many pages and who should have been introduced and things like that. It’s just craft, but generally it’s the same process. I don’t have researchers. I don’t have co-writers. I do it all myself, but it’s worked for me and I’m going to continue doing that.

Steve Thomas: Well, hopefully your library is helpful for you sometimes with your research.

C. J. Box: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I do lots of research.

Steve Thomas: We always hate to read a book and then automatically you’re on tour for this book and say, “Oh, well, yeah, now what’s the next book?” But do you already have some idea of what the next Joe Pickett will be?

C. J. Box: Sure, I’m halfway into it, because that’s just the nature of it with a book every year. The next book, won’t surprise you to hear, is going to be more of a Nate Romanowski book and he will be dealing with the things that happened in the end of the book you are reading right now.

Steve Thomas: Okay, great. And do you think we’ll see more of the other two girls? Because I feel we’ve been Sheridan-heavy the last couple of books. I don’t know if we’re going to tick back to the other girls anytime soon.

C. J. Box: Yes, we will. Absolutely. It may not be in the next book, but in the following ones, I kind of like different members of the family to take star turns in every few books, and you’re right. It’s been a while for the other two daughters, but it’s going to come.

Steve Thomas: Yeah, Marybeth always has a role to play.

C. J. Box: That’s right.

Steve Thomas: She had her big library moment in the last book.

C. J. Box: That’s right. That’s right.

Steve Thomas: All right. Well again, the book is Three-Inch Teeth, and it is available now for purchase or you can go check out the book from your local public library. Thank you, CJ, for the great conversation.

C. J. Box: Thank you very much. Thanks again for having me.

Steve Thomas: Have a great day.

C. J. Box: You too.