OK, let me admit it - I'm a fan of Wyoming author C.J. Box. A big fan.

I got hooked with "Open Season," his first novel about Joe Pickett, a game warden in the Bighorn Mountains, and Box just keeps getting better.

His fifth novel in the series, "Out of Range," takes Pickett out of his element, both physically and emotionally as he's temporarily transferred to Jackson, Wyo., to oversee the Teton district after the death of his friend and fellow warden Will Jensen.

Pickett is rushed from the quiet of his smaller district into an area flush with game but also with power players, environmental extremists, big money and outsiders eager to develop property or trophy hunt. And he's pulled away from his wife and children just at the time when mysterious phone calls and a troubled daughter mean he's needed on the homefront.

The move leaves him without his main support - his family - and with one of the big wigs in his own department taking aim at Pickett's job. Readers of Box's earlier books in the series will recall that the warden also is targeted by the governor and an old nemesis, his home area's former sheriff who still has a power base.

And then there's Jensen's supposed suicide. Pickett just can't buy that scenario, especially because he and Jensen are so much alike.

Readers are in for an intense ride through the bumpy trails of Pickett's new district and the simmering stew of suspicion and surly attitudes.

As with his other books, Box packs a lot of action into his first pages as Jensen gorges himself on meat and fingers his .44 Magnum before sliding into sleep, then awakening, disoriented, to a "roar in his ears ? so faint that it reminded him of a soft breeze in the treetops."

The soft breeze becomes a raging storm that engulfs Pickett as he tries to patch up problems left by Jensen and finds himself, too, plagued by uncharacteristic anger.

Pickett's pressured on all sides and haunted as well: "I have a dead man's job, a dead man's house, the dead man's problems, and I've been mistaken for a dead man."

And that's just the start - it's clear that someone also wants Pickett to be a dead man.

Box peppers the pages of "Out of Range" with intriguing characters, many with reason to want Pickett out of the picture. And Box adds the tension of temptation, both for Pickett and his wife.

As a Wyoming native, the author uses his familiarity with area to provide subtle details that let readers clearly see Pickett visiting forest outfitting camps or laboring in the changing community of Jackson.

The author draws on current events, such as brucellosis and the mad-cow scare, to ground his story, including the planned development whose draw is letting rich residents "connect" to their food, which would be born, raised and processed in an "organic slaughterhouse on-site with viewing windows."

Too bad fencing off the land would cut off wildlife migration routes. And too bad that Pickett has the contentious chore of making a recommendation about approving the development.

It's business as usual for a very down-to-earth Pickett caught in the crossfire.

Box again loads the book with misdirection and surprises. His writing is crisp yet descriptive. And the reader is pulled into the action and the fear.

The author is right on target again with "Out of Range," a book well worth putting in your sights.
By CHRIS RUBICH
Of The Gazette Staff