"...a skillful writer...wily surprises...thoroughly entertaining."

You don't have to be a disgruntled tea-guzzler to figure out that there is a deep unrest in our nation today, manifested in a growing cadre of decent, hardworking Americans who are profoundly unsettled by the direction in which the nation appears to be heading. Mystery writer C.J. Box captures this earnest spirit beautifully in "Nowhere to Run" (Putnam), the latest installment in his terrific series featuring Joe Pickett, the good-hearted Wyoming game warden with a knack for getting into trouble — and then getting back out again, after lots of drama and thrills.

In "Nowhere to Run," anti-big-government fever sweeps across the remote country regularly patrolled by Pickett. I can't tell you much more than that because Box is a skillful writer and plot-spinner with plenty of wily surprises up his chambray sleeve. Just know that this is a thoroughly entertaining mystery, and that you'll share Pickett's deep anguish over some moral decision he is required to make.

The real heart and soul of a Box novel, though, is always the description of the Western landscape: "They broke through the trees and emerged onto a treeless meadow walled by dark timber, and he stopped to look and listen," the author writes of Pickett and his horse. "What he saw were mountains that tumbled like frozen ocean waves all the way south into Colorado. … There were no human structures of any kind in view and hadn't been for a full day. No power lines, microwave stations or cell phone towers. The only proof that he was not riding across the same wilderness in the 1880s were the jet trails looking like snail tracks high in the sky."

jikeller@tribune.com

http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/ct-ae-0425-lit-life-side-201...