Wyoming Gov. Spencer Rulon has a problem. His son-in-law hired a guide, disappeared into the southern Wyoming wilderness to hunt elk, and hasn’t been heard from since.
So once again, Rulon turns to game warden Joe Pickett, whom he’s come to regard as his own private problem-solver.
But that’s far from all that goes on in “Battle Mountain,” the 25th novel in C.J. Box’s crime fiction series featuring Pickett.
Corporate and government leaders of America’s military-industrial complex are gathering for a secret meeting at a remote Wyoming resort near the elk hunting grounds.
Pickett’s off-the-grid pal Nate Romanowski is trying to track down a violent criminal named Axel Soledad, who killed Nate’s wife in violent rampage in a previous novel, “Three-Inch Teeth” (2024).
And Soledad, it turns out, has surreptitiously recruited a small army of terrorists to attack the secret meeting.
Unbeknownst to any of them, they are all on a collision course as they venture into the wilderness in the shadow of a towering peak called “Battle Mountain.”
As faithful readers of the Pickett series know, Nate is a falconer, and he carries his birds with him on his hunt for Soledad. But this time, when Nate launches his birds into the sky, he “sees” the landscape through their eyes. This unexpected introduction of mysticism may be off-putting to some readers.
Nevertheless, Box does a fine job of pulling the disparate threads of his complex story together; and he keeps readers guessing about who will live and who will die as the suspenseful, fast-paced tale heads to a violent conclusion. However, the novel contains so many references to incidents in previous books that first-time Box readers may feel a bit lost.
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Bruce DeSilva, winner of the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Award, is the author of the Mulligan crime novels including “The Dread Line.”
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Bruce Desilva, The Associated Press
