The Disappeared

The Reluctant Detective

CJ Box’s hero, Joe Pickett,  is a Fish And Game Warden in Wyoming, which gives the writer a chance to go all lyrical in describing beautiful landscapes, even as mysteries are being solved.

In the eighteenth Pickett novel, The Disappeared, Pickett finds himself in a corner, pushed there by the new governor of the state, who hates his guts. He cannot protest when Governor Colter Allen sends him to hunt for a high-profile British traveller,  Kate Shelford-Longden, who vanished without a trace after leaving the exclusive Silver Creek Ranch after her vacation, to Denver Airport from where she was to fly home to London. If he turns down the assignment, or fails at it, his job is at stake.

Pickett has to drive to the Ranch in the middle of the bitter January winter to solve the case that has baffled the county Sheriff and the Wyoming Department of Criminal Investigation. Luckily for Pickett, his daughter  Sheridan, works at the Ranch as a horse wrangler, and worked with the missing woman. She is also familiar with the staff at the Ranch (including new boyfriend Lance Ramsey) and the people around town.

It does seem as if someone does not want the case to be solved, because as soon as Pickett gets to the town, the notes given to him by the governor’s unpleasant chief of staff Connor Hanlon, are stolen. Pickett’s old friend, the outlaw falconer, Nate Romanowski, who is not supposed to be involved with the case, as per orders, turns up to ask for a favour.  Pickett, the reluctant detective, ends up solving both, in this enjoyable and fast-paced read.

The Disappeared

By CJ Box

Publisher: Putnam

Pages:  400