Putnam 2020
United Kingdom: Head of Zeus
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Long Range
When the wife of a prominent local judge is wounded on Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett’s turf, all signs point to the shot having been taken from an impossible distance. At the same time — just as he’s adjusting to the arrival of his first child — Joe’s best friend Nate Romanowski is suspected of being the assassin. All this happens while Joe is attempting to decipher a startling grizzly attack. Beset by threats both man-made and natural, the two men must go to great lengths to keep their loved ones safe.
The New York Times Book Review:
Good characters, an extra-good story and great scenes of life and death in the wilderness.
Publishers Weekly (starred and boxed review):
Clever plotting keeps this conspiracy yarn moving briskly, and the scenes depicting Nate’s abuse while in prison are harrowing. This is another top-flight crime yarn illustrating why Box’s readers are never happier than when Joe and Nate have reason to “get western.”
Booklist:
After 19 hot-selling novels featuring low-key Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett, Box has secured his reputation as an author who can take this increasingly popular genre—the modern western—and make it do whatever he wants...Box handles it all with a clear, easy style that plays nicely against the pulse-pounding tension...[he] remains the gold standard among writers of modern western-mystery blends.
The result is a fast-paced, tightly written tale...Box keeps readers guessing almost to the end.
If there was any doubt before, Long Range proves once and for all that when it comes to crime fiction, C.J. Box owns the whole damn genre...and it’s not even close.
Box is as consistent as it gets, but in “Long Range” he reaches for a different brand of brass ring and effortlessly captures it. He contrasts the wide-open expanse Pickett is bound to protect with the claustrophobic nature of civilization into which he must venture. Brilliant in all respects.
Reading C.J. Box is sheer delight. Just as Larry McMurtry is the gold standard for novels of the Old West, C.J. Box is without rival when it comes to thrilling crime mystery novels set in our modern-day West. His latest “Long Range,” #20 in his Joe Pickett series, is yet further proof that this master storyteller is one of today’s best writers working in any genre. He’s one of those rare talents who can produce a large stack of novels with each succeeding one fresh, never stale, never waning, always getting better, even though most have the same cast of characters. ...What follows is a more-than-one-storyline incredibly good read, a fast-paced, riveting mystery thriller with so many twists and turns and surprises you never saw coming that it will have you on the edge of your seat all the way to the end. And if that’s not enough, C.J. Box writes about Wyoming in such beautiful prose you’d swear you can see it. And he has a gift for creating characters you feel you know and are looking at.
LONG RANGE by C. J. Box is an impressive mile marker by any standard. In an era when it is sometimes difficult to find someone who has read 20 books over the course of their adult life, Box has written that many involving the Wyoming game warden (as well as a number of other worthy novels) and created a literary icon in the process, one who is a contemporary Western Everyman. It’s an admirable feat, and this latest entry in the series contains some of his best writing and plotting to date...[a] fast-moving tale, which combines Box’s unique characterization with a couple of puzzling but plausible mysteries that keep readers and our protagonist guessing almost to the last page. The quiet power of Box’s writing is such that it is understandable if one chooses to read LONG RANGE while sitting far away from any windows, given the manner of the attempted attack on Hizzoner in the story’s opening pages. I didn’t, but I still occasionally feel an itch on the back of my neck and head some weeks after reading this new adventure in Joe Pickett’s life. If that isn’t masterful prose, I don’t know what is.
“Long Range” (with its surprise ending) shows Box has lost none of his punch as both he and Joe Pickett grow older.
Box is adept at alternating and weaving together these plots and building suspense along the way. Sometimes the reader knows more than Joe, but not always. And not everything is neatly wrapped up at the end, with enough loose ends to make “Long Range” realistic and a strong steppingstone for the next Joe Pickett novel.
Along with the action, Box has established a terrific cast of Western characters, especially Pickett, who by this 20th book is an empty nester with his brainy librarian wife, Marybeth; their three 20-something daughters, one of whom may follow in her dad’s footsteps; and the former assassin Nate, still managing his beloved peregrine falcons but now coming to terms with family life. When it comes to western contemporary thrillers with intriguing characters, no one does it better than Box.
Ah, you really gotta love a book that starts out on the back of a trail horse, ends with a trailing thread, and slams you around from mesa to hillside to canyon and everywhich where in between — which is to say, you’re gonna love LONG RANGE...the latest in a series that goes way back, but don’t let that deter you: you can read this novel first, last, or standalone. Just know that you should be out to get it.