Box sights in hot new mystery
Joe Pickett's self-confidence, family and career are in the crosshairs in author C.J. Box's sixth book featuring the troubled, but appealing Wyoming game warden.

As in all of Wyoming native Box's Pickett novels, the action starts with the first sentence. This time out, ranch owner Opal Scarlett, whose family goes back to the early days of Saddlestring, Wyo., disappears.

"No one mourned except her three grown sons, Arlen, Hank, and Wyatt, who expressed their loss by getting into a fight with shovels," Box writes of the cantankerous old woman.
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In Opal, he introduces a vivid, crusty character whom many Montana and Wyoming residents have met under other names and in real communities. Wealthy, fiercely proud of her family's heritage and determined to protect her Thunderhead Ranch from all comers, she illegally charges folks who travel the river through her land and has it in for Pickett for trying to make her follow stream-access laws.

Her disappearance plunks Pickett square in the middle of a many-sided mystery. His teenage daughter, Sheridan, is best pals with Opal's granddaughter, Julie. Pickett's wife has a contract to work with Opal's legislator son Arlen. Pickett's called on mutual aid when Opal vanishes.

And, oh, yes, there's his actual job of enforcing wildlife law involving stream access and the questionable mounts of animals possibly killed illegally by Hank and preserved by Wyatt.

The mix is volatile enough, but Box reaches back to the first of his Pickett books, "Open Season," to revive the ghost of poacher/outfitter Ote Kelley. Though dead, Kelley casts a long shadow over Pickett and his family that continued into the third Pickett novel, "Winterkill" and only becomes bloodier in "In Plain Sight."

Also looming over Pickett is his boss, whose hatred cripples the warden's ability to do his job with demands to know Pickett's every move and who lets politics overrule law at will.

Again Box involves real issues as key elements of his novel. The series has blended topics such as the Endangered Species Act, environmental extremism, subdivision of wildlands and more as Pickett battled to live up to his standards while protecting his family, friends and wildlife.

Pickett can't seem to catch a break. He struggles to maintain relations with his teenaged daughter and keep from exploding at his meddling, censuring mother-in-law. He fears a widening rift with his wife. And, as large as his territory is in the Bighorn Mountains, he can't seem to escape petty actions by the sheriff who despises Pickett.

Box blends the landscape that he knows well from his own past as a fishing guide and ranch hand with tension driven by realistic human greed, misunderstandings, jealousy and hatreds.

He doesn't sugarcoat the violence but reveals the roots of evil that erode human hearts.

It helps to have read Box's earlier works because the author ties the series together so well. You'll have better understanding of Pickett's struggles with officials and more easily pick up clues to the plot of "In Plain Sight" if you have the other five works in your memory.

But any mystery fan who enjoys a contemporary Western setting can get drawn in just by reading the opening page of "In Plain Sight" and still find a rich read.

Just be warned, you'll want to keep the lights burning to see if your theories on resolution of the many mysteries in the book hold true -- and you'll be inspired to seek out those earlier Pickett books to learn more of his past and to savor Box's writing.

Contact Chris Rubich at crubich@billingsgazette.com or 657-1301.

Published on Sunday, May 21, 2006.
Last modified on 5/21/2006 at 1:11 am