"...staked out memorable turf..."

C.J. Box has staked out memorable turf — the rugged landscape of Wyoming — for his series about game warden Joe Pickett. But as the title of "Out of Range" (Putnam, 308 pp., $24.95) suggests, in this book Pickett roams far from his home in the tiny town of Saddlestring.

He is relocated temporarily to Jackson Hole, after the warden there — a good friend of Pickett's — commits suicide. This puts Pickett in among the nouveau riche of Jackson, including a wealthy developer who crossed swords with the late warden. Pickett soon is convinced that his friend's death was not exactly suicide. He's also lonely for his wife and kids, guiltily attracted to the developer's wife and plagued by a legendary back-country guide who might be breaking the law.

Box writes well about Pickett's tangled personal woes, in clean and sturdy prose. He's good, too, on describing the tensions that exist between the old and new Wyomings. But the writer is at his best when his guy heads out into the mountains — then it's just Pickett and the Wyoming wilderness. By Adam Woog