Three-Inch Teeth (2024) is the 24th book in the Joe Pickett saga by New York Times best-selling author C. J. Box. The novel tracks Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett as he deals with a series of horrific grizzly bear attacks tearing through his community. As the attacks grow more unhinged and spread over a wide radius, it becomes clear that Joe is dealing with more than one beast, and the second is more dangerous than Joe’s wildest imaginings. Joe has to race against time to protect those he loves the most. The book explores the themes of The Dynamics Between Humans and Nature, The Persistence of Evil and the Resilience of Good, and The Tensions Between Revenge and Justice.

This guide refers to the Head of Zeus, Bloomsbury, 2024 Kindle edition.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of graphic violence, death, child death, animal death, child abuse, and addiction.

Plot Summary

Fishing in peaceful Twelve Sleep River, handsome local hero Clay Hutmacher, Jr., is excited about proposing to his girlfriend, Sheridan Pickett, later that night. However, Clay’s dreams are obliterated when a large grizzly sow kills him in an attack of unusual frenzy. 

As panic about the grizzly attack tears through the community, game warden Joe Pickett, Sheridan’s father, decides to track down the rogue bear with the help of biologist Jennie Gordon and a group of wardens from around Wyoming. Complicating Joe’s task are the Mama Bears, a group of wealthy animal activists who think of wildlife officials as animal-killing fanatics. The Mama Bears think that the grizzly who attacked Clay is Tisiphone, a grieving sow lashing out at humans after her three cubs were run over by a negligent driver. While investigating the scene of the attack, one of the wardens, Bill Brodbeck, is also attacked by a grizzly; he later dies from his injuries.

Meanwhile, Dallas Cates has just been released from Rawlins Penitentiary in Wyoming and has only one thing on his mind: settling scores with the people who he believes destroyed his family, with Joe featuring at the top of the list. When Joe makes an appearance on TV in connection with the bear attack on Clay, Cates hatches an elaborate plan to kill his enemies without getting caught. 

With the help of his girlfriend Bobbi Johnson, Cates steals a mounted taxidermized bear named Zeus from an old museum. Cates brings the bear’s jaws and paws to his old cellmate, Lee Ogborn-Russell (LOR), so that the sadistic mechanical genius can fashion them into a killing machine. The result is a device with steel jaws into which Zeus’s teeth are screwed. The device can clamp down on an object with the bite force of a bear. 

Cates drives around Wyoming with Johnson and LOR, targeting his enemies with the machine he names Zeus II. Cates is joined in his mission by Axel Soledad, another antagonist who believes in a radical ideology of inciting violence against the government. Since the killings mimic bear attacks, Joe and the others believe that they are the handiwork of the same grizzly who attacked Clay. Cates’s killings throw the wardens off their game since they cannot understand how a grizzly could travel enormous distances in minimal time to carry out the targeted killings. The wardens begin to suspect that two separate bears may be involved in the attacks. 

As the mystery around the grizzly attacks deepens, in a parallel storyline, Sheridan, a master falconer, arrives in Colorado to use her falcons to rid a farm of starlings. In an unexpected turn of events, Sheridan discovers that the housekeeper at the farm, Katy Cotton, is Joe’s mother, who left Joe and his brother 40 years ago. When Cotton makes it clear that she wants nothing to do with her former family, Sheridan finishes her assignment and heads back to Saddlestring to return the falcons to their mews at the homestead of her bosses, Nate and Liv Romanowski. Nate is Joe’s friend and a former special ops member with a wild, anti-establishment streak. Like the Picketts, Nate and Liv are on the kill list of both Cates and Soledad.

Their murderous spree finally brings Cates and Soledad’s group to Saddlestring, the hometown of both Joe and Cates. Their next target is Judge Hewitt, who sentenced Cates to prison. Though Cates manages to attack Hewitt, a local deputy spots the taillights of Cates’s truck near the site of the attack, suggesting a human element to the supposed bear attack. Joe’s wife, Marybeth Pickett, begins to put together the pieces when she learns that Cates was released from Rawlins 12 days prior. Marybeth alerts Joe that Cates—and not a grizzly—is behind most of the killings and may well be headed to their house. Joe tries to warn Liv and Nate about a possible attack by Cates, but neither answers their phone.

Meanwhile, Liv, home alone with her and Nate’s toddler, Kestrel, is brutally killed by Cates and LOR. Sheridan discovers Liv’s mutilated body when she enters the Romanowski compound to return the falcons. Sheridan grabs a weeping Kestrel and brings her to Joe and Marybeth. As the Picketts arm themselves while they wait for Cates, Joe calls Jackson Bishop, Hewitt’s son-in-law and the possible next sheriff, for help. Unknown to Joe, Bishop has no plan of sending help. Instead, he alerts Soledad about Joe’s discovery of their plan. Soledad flees the scene on the pretext of conducting a recon operation. 

Just as Cates stops his truck near Joe’s front door, Nate, who has discovered Liv’s corpse, emerges from the shadows. In a fit of vengeance, Nate fires indiscriminately at the truck, killing Johnson and LOR. He abducts Cates and brings him to his compound. Even though Joe follows and begs Nate to spare Cates, Nate kills the man using the same mechanical device with which Cates committed the murders. Leaving Kestrel in the care of Joe and Marybeth, Nate goes off the grid.

As the novel ends, the grizzly that killed Clay and Brodbeck is spotted again on the ranch of Clay’s father. Clay Hutmacher, Sr., kills the bear. Joe, Gordon, and the others discover that the Mama Bears were right: The sow is none other than the distraught Tisiphone. They erase her tattoo to avoid censure by animal rights groups. Joe reflects that Soledad is still out, that Bishop’s behavior is suspicious, and that Nate is bound to be hunting Soledad. Thus, the story will go on.