"...has it all..."

Joe Pickett, hero of C. J. Box's series, was a new discovery for me last year. I read one book and then hunted out four more. In Plain Sight is the sixth in the series, and the best. Box has it all: great characters, a wonderful sense of place, and a kind of western rural landscape that seems to embody the best of the United States. That is, if your vision of the United States includes murder.

The plot involves the disappearance of a local ranch owner. Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett is a friend, and given his range of operations, it's logical that he'd be part of the hunt. But this being a Pickett novel, there's a whole lot more going on than a simple kidnapping or runaway, and everything escalates until a whole town becomes trapped in what may or may not be a family feud gone into murderous territory.

Box is at his best when he uses the gorgeousness of the American West as backdrop to the ugliness of human malevolence. By Margaret Cannon