"...excellent run of suspense on the range..."

If you need a good reason to pick up a new mystery, look no further. C.J. Box is one of the best things going in the genre, and he lives right up the highway in Cheyenne, which makes him practically a neighbor. His sixth book, In Plain Sight, continues his excellent run of suspense on the range.

Back home in the Bighorn Mountains after his last adventure in Jackson Hole, fish and game warden Joe Pickett is up against long odds again. The heirs of a rich and powerful ranching family prepare to slug it out over the estate. Problem is, they expect everyone in the town of Saddlestring (based on real-life Sheridan) to choose sides on who gets the ranch, too. To make matters more chaotic, the family matriarch Opal Scarlett has disappeared under suspicious circumstances.

Pickett gets involved after the new foreman for one of the brothers beats him up. His daughter, friends with the Scarlett family's youngest, goes to the ranch for a slumber party, and we get a taste of what Box calls Ranch Gothic - dark rooms with old paintings in the castle-like ranch house, and the family's spooky, overwrought emphasis on its ranching legacy. Meanwhile, granny remains missing.

Fans of the series will appreciate the way Box connects previous storylines with the current plot. John Wayne Keeley, the very scary bad guy of In Plain Sight, is related to characters in two of Box's previous novels. Then there's the return of Pickett's nemesis from Out of Range, Randy Pope. With the loathsome Pope appointed to head the state's Game and Fish Department, Pickett knows he's in for a tough time with a boss who's out to get him. Box portrays with stinging precision the frustration and misery of an employee nitpicked by an incompetent boss.

Northern Wyoming, ripe with coal, gas and oil, boasts a rich vein of mysteries as well, with both Box and newcomer Craig Johnson writing about the region. Mystery readers will be the winners who harvest this newest natural resource from the Cowboy State.

Jane Dickinson