By Joe Hartlaub

I had read only three pages of BLUE HEAVEN by C. J. Box when life got in the way and I had to set it aside. It was a couple of days before I could pick it back up, but those parts stayed with me --- heck, haunted me --- throughout the intervening period. They introduced me to 12-year-old Annie Taylor and her little brother William, who go fishing alone in an act of offspring rebellion and set off a chain reaction of events. When I was able to resume reading the book, I consumed it in one extended, unbroken visual feast, tasting of heartbreak and violence, of tragedy and promise.

Box has written seven Joe Pickett novels that have garnered well-deserved critical acclaim. BLUE HEAVEN stands on its own; if you haven’t read the previous installments yet, this latest offering will give you plenty of reason to begin, as it incorporates a number of the elements of that series --- rural western settings, integrity, redemption and, oh yes, crime --- but in a very different way.

The book is set in North Idaho --- nicknamed “Blue Heaven” due to the number of retired police officers who have moved there --- and is in the throes of change. When Annie and William go fishing, the history of the area collides violently with the present when they witness an execution-style murder committed by three men, all of whom are retired Los Angeles police officers. Annie and William flee into the woods, setting off a missing persons search. The local sheriff, understaffed and under-experienced, gladly accepts the help of the former police officers in looking for the children, even as they turn the manhunt to their own unspeakable motive: the kids, of course, cannot remain alive.

Jess Rawlins, a local rancher whose land has belonged to his family for generations, becomes Annie and William’s only ally. Rawlins is an unlikely savior; his property is on the cusp of foreclosure, he has lost his wife and son to the whims of fate and circumstance, and the area that he loves is barely recognizable --- and not for the better. Over the span of a little more than two days, Rawlins will meet these two children, who tell a confusing, almost unbelievable, tale, and then stand against apparently insurmountable odds in a last-ditch effort to save them.

Rawlins does not stand alone. He is aided by two people: one is a man he barely knows, an outsider at the end of an eight-year pursuit of a truth that has haunted him; the other is someone who Rawlins has known practically all his life and whose errors and omissions have led indirectly to the occurrences that are shaking the idyllic existence of Blue Heaven to its core. By the last page, everything, for good and for bad, will be changed.

From its haunting cover to its poetic, bittersweet last paragraph, BLUE HEAVEN is an unforgettable, powerful tale.