This is a good one in the Joe Pickett series, one of the best maybe, but I’ve got 17 books to go – LOL!  

Free Fire
by C.J. Box – 2007 (book) 
Read by David Chandler 11h 5m
Rating – A++ / western crime 
(# 7 in the Joe Pickett series) 

Everyone is on the scene since Joe was fired from his job as county game warden in Twelve Sheep County, Wyoming; that was In Plain Sight. And even if this is an older book, there was still a 12-week (!) wait at the library and I’d already been waiting for about 6 weeks. So I caved and got it at Audible (Premium membership).  

The main series cast: 
Joe Pickett – a middle aged game warden in Wyoming.
Marybeth – Joe’s wife 
Shannon – their oldest daughter – maybe 15
Lucy – their younger daughter – 8?
Missy – Marybeth’s mother –
Bud – Missy’s ranch-owner husband
Nate- a recluse and Joe’s friend and neighbor – trains falcons  – hates the gov’t 

But Joe the governor of Wyoming wanted him hired back to take care of a situation in which some lawyer admitted, up front, that he murdered 4 people in a certain area of the park. The twist was that the law said the jury had to come from the area. Unfortunately, because nobody lived in that little area, there was no jury and Clay McCann walked free. The nearby citizens got in an uproar and the newly freed lawyer-guy apparently enjoyed the whole thing.  So now the governor has a problem and sends the newly reemployed Joe to go investigate and figure it out.

There were a few too many added characters (for plot purposes) for me to really keep track of. who they were and what they did. And the plot was convoluted but I got the gist of it.  Good book, though, it’s fun with wise-cracking and family matters,  but as usual in C.J. Box’s books, the plot takes a turn for the deadly serious.  It’s more than a thriller, there’s who-done-it  a mystery in there – who the heck and why?