Joe Pickett, exiled to the “warden’s graveyard” in a remote district of southern Wyoming, has one week left before regaining his old job in Twelve Sleep County, where his family still lives. On a final horseback patrol, however, a routine citation for unlicensed fishing turns into a deadly confrontation with twin brothers Caleb and Camish Grim, whose anger at the government is downright murderous. The first hundred pages are as good as anything Box has written, highlighting both the dangerous beauty of the West and the risks of a job where a lone civil servant interacts with a well-armed populace. As events escalate and a complex conspiracy comes to light, momentum is maintained by the dogged determination of Pickett, who could have walked away, and probably should have, but didn’t. At issue, ultimately, is the rule of government versus the rights of the people, and by the time Pickett goes back up the mountain for a final showdown with the Grim brothers, he sees the confrontation, as we do, in a whole new light—but that won’t, of course, stop him from doing his duty. (Series fans will appreciate the way circumstances test the tenacious loyalty of the lawman’s outlaw friend, Nate Romanowski.) As Box has become more prolific, his gold standard has become alloyed, but Nowhere to Run, the tenth in the series, ranks with his best books, such as Open Season (2001) and Out of Range (2005). Readers should take note of their surroundings before opening this book: once they start reading, they won’t know what hit them.
— Keir Graff
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