Wyoming sets stage for beauty, tragedy
Leave it to CJ Box. The author nimbly combines the beauty of Wyoming's big country with a Shakespearian tragedy, then throws in a sidebar of vengeance for good measure.

If there's one thing Box's worldwide audience has learned from reading his thrilling crime series, it's this: It isn't easy being Joe Pickett.

First of all, the game warden has 1,500 square miles of territory under his jurisdiction. The sheriff and most of his deputies hate Pickett. His new supervisor, a bureaucratic jerk, is monitoring Pickett's every move, demeaning the warden at every turn. His state-owned housing is hardly enough room to satisfy Pickett's weary wife and two daughters. To add insult to injury, Pickett's mother-in-law constantly berates her daughter for marrying beneath herself.

Despite the obstacles, Pickett maintains his stalwart dignity, enjoying the simple pleasures of the wilderness he manages. But, that's all about to change.

In Plain Sight explores a real-life-based family feud. Wyoming's fictional Twelve Sleep County is run, more or less, by the Scarlett family. Mother Opal Scarlett and her three sons own more property and have more influence than anyone around. Now the despotic matriarch is missing and the siblings are swinging shovels. Could one of her boys have killed mama Opal, or did a drunken fisherman exact his revenge?

The search proves fruitless as tensions rise. With their mother presumed dead, who really owns the vast Thunderhead Ranch? And should Pickett's teenage daughter really consider a sleepover with her best friend, Julie Scarlett, who lives in the middle of a gothic nightmare?

Now, throw in a thoroughly nasty visitor from Pickett's past.

Many plots from Box's previous five novels play into the vile mission that threatens to annihilate our hero. When this villain becomes the ranch foreman for one of the Scarlett brothers, plots merge and the muddy picture becomes crystal clear.

Both thrilling and frightening, with a protagonist James Lee Burke would love to trout fish with, In Plain Sight will satisfy CJ Box fans well into the night.

Escape to Wyoming's big sky country for a few days, but bring along a Kevlar vest. By JC Patterson
Special to The Clarion-Ledger