"...An excellent series..."

Keeping any series balanced between familiar and fresh is tricky. An excellent series is like a tightrope act. With the author pushing himself to daring new heights, we just know he’s bound to fall. In the sixth installment of Box’s Joe Pickett series, the Wyoming game warden is back home in Saddlestring, happy to be with his family, when he finds himself in the crosshairs of an ex-con intent on righting a perceived wrong (from Winterkill, 2003) and drawn into an epic family feud. Out of Range (2005) was so remarkable that asking Box to top it seems unfair. Indeed, though Joe is again tested, In Plain Sight lacks the intensity and inventiveness of the previous books. Box always works in an issue—here it’s the "curse of the third generation," or inheritance troubles—and while it’s a nice update on the western gothic, it doesn’t have the same burning relevance as ecoterrorism or natural gas drilling. Even a family-in-jeopardy device feels slightly rote. But a high-wire artist can’t go up indefinitely, and even performing closer to the ground, Box puts on a hell of a show. —Keir Graff