A new governor demanding special favors means a new assignment and new problems for Wyoming Fish and Game Warden Joe Pickett.It's not Gov. Colter Allen's fault that high-profile British ad-agency CEO Kate Shelford-Longden disappeared somewhere between Silver Creek Ranch, the ultra-posh dude ranch where she'd just spent a week been pampered within an inch of her life, and the Denver airport several months ago. But his wife and other folks are leaning on him, so he leans on Joe (Vicious Circle, 2017, etc.) to drive the 300 miles to Saratoga in the depth of a January freeze and get the answers that have eluded Carbon County Sheriff Ron Neal and the Wyoming Department of Criminal Investigation. Bullied by the governor, Joe agrees to look into the case. Luckily, he has an in: His daughter, Sheridan, who's been working at Silver Creek as a horse wrangler, got fairly close to the missing woman and knows all the ins and outs of the place. The staff at Silver Creek has been vetted more closely than most vice presidential candidates, but several contractors with access to the ranch seem suspicious enough to make likely suspects. Before Joe can make any real progress, though, the case notes he's been given by Connor Hanlon, the governor's dislikable chief of staff, are stolen, and his old friend Nate Romanowski, the "outlaw falconer" he's been specifically ordered to keep away from, drops in to ask Joe a serious, albeit apparently unrelated, favor. The case turns out, rather disappointingly, to be two cases. But it's a treat to see Joe's daughter pulled into working with her father; there's an unexpected role for his reptilian mother-in-law, the imperishable Missy Vankueren; a false lead he follows will have readers whooping with laughter; and both cases are wound up in highly satisfactory ways.Best of all, the final pages find Box's hard-used hero both triumphantly successful and in deep trouble once again in perhaps the most finely balanced conclusion in this rewarding series.

In Box's 18th series installment (after Vicious Circle), Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett finds himself once again working on special assignment for the governor. Newly elected, Colter Allen is a man with a not-so-sterling past, a short temper, and little patience, especially for Joe Pickett. The CEO of a British ad agency disappeared after leaving the Silver Creek Ranch, and Joe's task is to find her. Joe's eldest daughter, Sheridan, works at the ranch, and Pickett family friend Nate Romanowski is also in nearby Saratoga and needs Joe's help. The facets of this story are many: falconers seeking permits to hunt with eagles, mysterious goings-on at a local lumber mill, an exclusive guest ranch that caters to the one percent, a missing British citizen, state politics, a wind farm with thousands of turbines expanding its acreage, and Joe's mother-in-law, Missy VanKueran. Box neatly links all these disparate components, and his wrap-up will leave his many readers breathless. Verdict Another hit for storyteller extraordinaire Box, and series fans and aficionados of Craig Johnson's "Walt Longmire" mysteries will cheer.-Patricia Ann Owens, formerly with Illinois Eastern Community Coll., Mt. Carmel © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Game warden Joe Pickett is on special assignment again. This time, Wyoming's new governor has sent him south, to the Upper North Platte River Valley, tasking him with finding a high-profile English guest who disappeared without a trace from a four-star dude ranch. Despite help from his daughter, Sheridan, now a horse wrangler at the ranch, and old friend Nate Romanowski, Joe doesn't like his odds of success in fact, he soon wonders whether he's been set up to fail. As their investigation leads to a fish hatchery (where the lethal Nate creatively and hilariously expands his interrogation tactics), a wind farm, a cabin in the woods, and a sawmill with a so-called wigwam burner, the government-hating Nate pursues a conspiracy theory of his own which harkens back to the author'sCold Wind (2011) and addresses a hot-button issue of the modern West. The eighteenth installment of this hugely popular series delivers everything fans want: a compelling mystery, high-stakes action in a beautiful setting, and enjoyably humorous interaction between characters they've come to know and love. There's a reason we keep coming back for more. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Box, a number-one New York Times best-seller, has sold more than 10 million books in the U.S. to date he's about to sell a lot more.--Graff, Keir Copyright 2018 Booklist

In bestseller Box's superlative 18th novel featuring Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett (after 2017's Vicious Circle), the state's new governor, Colter Allen, orders Joe, who did many special investigations for the previous governor, to find out what happened to the CEO of a high-profile British advertising agency, Kate Shelford-Longden, who has gone missing after vacationing at the Silver Creek Ranch outside Saratoga. Given suspiciously few resources and very little time, Joe is happy to accept the help of both his 23-year-old daughter, Sheridan, who works as a wrangler at the ranch, and comrade Nate Romanowski, who predictably approaches the case from beyond the law's boundaries. Meanwhile, the lethal Gaylen Kessel, the head security agent for the wind energy company that has taken over the region, makes trouble. In the end, Sheridan and Nate must deal out rough justice to the malefactors, while the book's key environmental issue enhances the satisfying conclusion. Also welcome are Box's underrated touches of wry humor, generally overlooked as one of his strengths. Series fans and newcomers alike will be rewarded. Author tour. Agent: Ann Rittenberg, Ann Rittenberg Literary Agency. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Whatever Robbie was expecting at the end of this tense trip, it wasn't a big tip and a compliment on his driving. But that's the way it is with Grimes: Great characters who say and do the most unexpected things are her stock in trade. The charmer here is 10-year-old Patty Haigh ("looks like a little girl, but acts like MI6"), one of a group of loosely parented children who hang around the stations at Waterloo and Heathrow, practicing the skills needed to be cops. Patty even talks her way into a firstclass seat on a plane to Nairobi by attaching herself to the murderer she's pursuing. "For someone who shoots people," she acknowledges, "he was pretty nice." Meanwhile, Grimes's irresistibly attractive Scotland Yard man is busy solving the murder of his newly acquired friends David Moffit, an American astronomer, and his wife, Rebecca. With enthusiastic assistance from his wealthy friend Melrose Plant and Plant's fellow drinkers at the Jack and Hammer pub, Jury manages to have multiple sets of eyes on his suspect. But our eyes are glued to Patty, off in Africa and having the time of her life. what's that smell? The acrid odor of fire is always cause for alarm in the mysteries C. J. Box sets in heavily forested Wyoming. But there's something strange about the odor that's coming from the burner at a lumber mill in the DISAPPEARED (Putnam, $27), "something that smelled a little like roast chicken." Wylie Frye, the night manager, recognizes the peculiar stench, but for $2,500 he can take shallow breaths and ignore it. The task of identifying that strange smell falls to Joe Pickett, the conscientious game warden in these rugged novels who is mostly charged with monitoring the wildlife of the region, where so much land is managed by the federal government. That explains his interest in a dicey wind energy project and his involvement with a group of falconers clamoring to hunt with eagles. But when a British tourist disappears from the dude ranch where Joe's daughter works, he shows the tough-and-tender qualities that make him such a great guy to have on your side. HISTORY comes alive when a character you think of as a friend is in the thick of the action. That's how Jacqueline Winspear keeps her Maisie Dobbs mysteries so fresh. TO DIE BUT ONCE (Harper, $27.99) opens in the spring of 1940, when the German Army is advancing on France and the British are preparing to evacuate. Maisie is already concerned about her office assistant, Billy Beale, who has a son at the front, when she receives an assignment from another worried father. Phil Coombes, landlord of the Prince of Wales pub, hasn't heard from 15-year-old Joe, an apprentice painter with Mike Yates and Sons, a firm that's been contracted to apply a fire-retardant emulsion to buildings at government airfields. Joe had been complaining of bad headaches, a detail that becomes much more significant when his body is discovered and, after the autopsy, Maisie learns he had suffered two brain injuries, one from a fall (or a push?) off a railroad bridge and one from exposure to toxins. Maisie's investigation takes on heft from its underlying theme of war profiteering, with greedy entrepreneurs like Mike Yates exposing their employees to life-threatening working conditions just to make a buck. Talking dirty can be great fun, especially when the trash talkers are Hap Collins and Leonard Pine, the cutup private eyes in Joe R. Lansdale's Texas crime capers. In jackrabbit smile (Mulholland / Little, Brown, $26), the partners are tasked with finding Jackie (Jackrabbit) Mulhaney, the daughter of white supremacists who don't care that Hap is irreverent and Leonard is black and gay. "We want her back," her mother says, "be it flesh, or be it bones." Jackie's father, Sebastian, a fire-breathing preacher, lived hard and died a sad and lonely death. But her brother, Thomas, is carrying the burning torch. For such a freewheeling stylist, Lansdale can write a sensitive obituary for a "confused and tortured soul" like Sebastian, as well as boisterous action scenes for his irrepressible leads. And he has compassion for places like Hell's Half Mile, "a line of honkytonks full of drunken patrons trying to wash down poverty, bad marriages and gone-to-hell children." ?