Mystery in magnificent Wyoming
Print Edition
MANY Americans aren’t that familiar with Wyoming, except perhaps for Yellowstone National Park. In C.J. Box’s thrillers, the Cowboy State is a featured character and you get to know its thickly forested mountains, its windy plains and its frontierlike towns.
In “Stone Cold,” the latest installment in the Joe Pickett series (Joe is a game warden who finds trouble as easily as a grizzly finds grubs), Box visits one of the most remote places of his beloved home state: the northeast corner, bypassed by the economy as well as many travelers.
Pickett is sent by the governor on an undercover mission to fictional Medicine Wheel County. Making a repeat appearance in the opening scenes is Pickett’s buddy, former special forces operative Nate Romanowski, who is on a mission to kill a bad guy — targeting not a jihadist but a shady American millionaire. Nate has crossed a line, but can he get back onto the right side?
The author paints vivid pictures of the Black Hills, which exist in Wyoming as well as in South Dakota, and you can feel the elements — a snowstorm descending on the mountains, the bitter cold. Landscape and weather are important features (get stuck for hours in a ground blizzard on I-80 and watch an antelope fall dead at your feet from hunger and exhaustion and you’ll know what I mean), and Box depicts these well. He’s also got a B plot rolling when Pickett’s daughter, a student at the University of Wyoming, must deal with a creepy potential school-shooter.
The area, is on the skids, mining and logging having played out. Residents are subsisting mostly on government benefits and are susceptible to collaborating with a rich guy who shows up buying property and influence, and who might be organizing assassinations.
It’s an accessible, quick and fun read.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
