Joe Pickett is a game warden in Wyoming (near Yellowstone) where he lives with his wife and two daughters.  One day he’s driving high school age daughter, Sheridan and her friend, Julie Scarlett, home from school, but they come across some men fighting each other with shovels. These are Julie’s father and uncles. It appears their mother, Opel Scarlett, age 75, has gone missing. 

In Plain Sight
By C.J. Box 
2006 / 
Read by Donald Chandler; 8h 23m
Rating:  A / thrille
(# 6 in Joe Pickett series)

This is not to say she’s missed, the curmudgeonly old tightwad, but she’s central to the Scarlett family getting a lot of business taken care of. The Scarletts have been in Twelve Sheep County, Wyoming for a long time and they have a lot of land and cattle.  With Opel absent, her projects are in limbo and the ranch is in danger of losing a lot of money.

But a lot of people had grudges, too.  And her own family probably has the worst grudges, but this last time it was a neighbor who got so mad he picked up her tiny body, swung it around, and tossed it into the river. She hasn’t been seen since, 

It’s been several days now and neither Opel nor a body have appeared. Two of her sons have been feuding anyway and can now now blame each other for this, too. It almost goes without saying the ranch is worth a lot of money and someone would inherit it.  Meanwhile, there appear to be a couple of new tough looking strangers asking questions. And is Joe’s daughter seeing a ghost?

After a full five months of Opel missing, the snow melts, new fawns come out to play, and there’s no progress on the murders which occurred. Also of note, Joe’s strange neighbor-buddy Nate Romanowski is still gone and there are FBI agents are poking around. Something about a truck found behind the penitentiary whose owner was killed in Mississippi.  

Asked for my one-word opinion I said “Delicious.”