C.J. Box injects a recurring villain into his cowboy novels and his stand-alone "Three Weeks to Say Goodbye": the system.

Mystery, Denver-style
Author Box breaks out of rural settings for family's horrific bureaucratic tale B+

By Jane Dickinson, Special to the Rocky

Cowboy-state native C.J. Box - one-time ranch hand, fishing guide and small-town newspaper man - has put Wyoming on the mystery map.

His popular series featuring game warden Joe Pickett has been translated into 18 languages (he gets fan mail from France), and he's won the Anthony, Macavity and Gumshoe awards, and been named an Edgar finalist, as well as 2007 Writer of the Year by the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers. And to top it all off, Box serves on the board of Cheyenne Frontier Days.

The cowboy hat isn't just a marketing gimmick. Box, who lives just up the road outside of Cheyenne, understands the West and Westerners like no other writer. In a genre often defined by cityscapes, his books give voice to a region that's often just a flyover.

Each of his novels takes a close look at how rapid changes collide with the lives of ordinary folks like Pickett and his family, from the encroachment of tourism on wild western spaces (2005's Out of Range) to coal bed methane development (2004's Trophy Hunt). Box's concerns center more on endangered liberties than endangered species, but his novels encompass the views of the environmental movement as well as an outdoorsman's appreciation of wide-open spaces.

From Box's first novel, Open Season, published in 2001, when Joe Pickett ticketed the governor of Wyoming for fishing without a license, to his most recent, Three Weeks to Say Goodbye, his characters have also been ready to take on bureaucrats and politicians as well as traditional and not-so-traditional bad guys. With Pickett in particular, Box has updated the classic Western image of the lone lawman maintaining order in a wild territory - but the real trick is that he does it without oversimplifying the questions he examines.

With his series well established - the eighth book, Blood Trail, was published in May - and fans clamoring for more, Box has begun branching out with stand-alone novels. Such is the case with his latest, a story that marks a departure for the author: Rather than a rural setting, it takes place in a city - a Western city, of course - and that city just happens to be Denver.

Three Weeks to Say Goodbye tells a frightening tale of adoption gone wrong. Jack and Melissa McGuane are threatened with the loss of their baby girl, adopted just months ago, because the natural father never signed away his rights. They face a system that's stacked against them. The baby's father, Garrett Moreland, a senior at Cherry Creek High School, seems to be an undiagnosed sociopath, but his dad's a powerful and well-liked federal judge who wants his granddaughter back in order to make his son live up to his obligations. He not only has the law on his side, he is the law - and so influential that no lawyer wants to go up against him.

His motives seem murky, and the teenage dad is downright scary, so the McGuanes not only face losing their daughter but sending her to an uncertain fate.

Jack's attempts to keep his daughter put his job with the city of Denver in jeopardy, and when friends try to help - one finds some possible dirt on the judge, while a pal with the Denver cops fends off the teenage father and his nasty friends - they face harsh repercussions, too.

Three Weeks to Say Goodbye ignites a parent's worst nightmares and asks a harrowing question: How far would you go to keep your child? It features Box's usual deft plotting and compelling characters: Jack and Melissa are just-down-the-street recognizable, the Denver functionaries they deal with all live off the page.

Unfortunately, the foundations of the story sometimes wobble. Box never fully persuades us that his adoption horror story isn't legally far-fetched, or that the judge's hidden motive for wanting his granddaughter back could be real.

Nevertheless, we like the McGuanes, and the Denver setting brings this story home. Fans of Box's top-notch Joe Pickett series might miss his cowboy ways, but readers can visit the Mile High City with a nice guy in a cowboy hat who always takes time to thank his readers for their support. What could be a better read for National Western Stock Show month?

Jane Dickinson is the Rocky's mystery critic. She is a freelance writer living in Littleton.

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2009/jan/01/mystery-denver-style/