Review of C J Box's Out of Range - The Western Is Alive and Well

A friend of mine recently emailed me to say that C. J. Box was in Denver doing a book signing. I responded immediately just to be put on a waiting list behind 44 other folks on the same list. Needless to say I did not get to see him. With bookstores hurting the way they are, it was a shame 44 potential buyers were turned away.

I decided to take Out of Range on vacation with me to Utah. Joe Pickett can’t seem to stay out of trouble, especially with authority figures. This time Joe is separated from his wife Marybeth, while he goes up to Jackson Hole, Wyoming in the Tetons to take over for a game warden that committed suicide. He is attracted to a real estate developer’s wife, while Marybeth flirts with a friend that Joe has asked to look out for his family. Box has a real talent for making you feel uncomfortable about the direction his stories take, mostly because he isn’t predictable.

I was just getting to that uncomfortable part, when I remembered I’d left the book at the pool at a hotel near Zion National Park. No one turned it in, and I figured I would have to wait until I got back to Denver. I tried the local bookstore. They had one and only one C. J. Box and it was Out of Range. Hurray! (I should have bought a lottery ticket, since the day before I had left my camera lens on a rock, while walking the Narrows at Zion and a guy had picked it up and returned it.)

Box again discusses some of the issues of the West, using Jackson Hole as a microcosm with its developers on one side and its tree huggers on another. He also contrasts the actions of the government in protecting land and wildlife with the actions of some of the old time, hardcore early hunters and settlers and their way of doing things. Sometimes it is difficult to decide who is right, especially when Box portrays the varying interests with both sympathetic and disagreeable characters.

This is the fifth book in the Joe Picket series and so far I have ve enjoyed all of them. I’ve gotten my husband hooked and hopefully you will like the series also. If you wondered if the Western was dead, you will be pleasantly surprised when you read these books to find out that they are still alive and kicking.

Review of C J Box's Out of Range - The Western Is Alive and Well