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Meanwhile, back in Sleep County, the Pickett family continue to receive anonymous phone calls. The ex-sheriff is propping up the bar trying and failing to maintain his previous standing in the community. And there's a stranger in town: a stranger with a gun.
The scene is set for a slow-building thriller, redolent of the wide -open spaces and the lawless backlands.
It got some great press. Some of my favourite authors, Lee Child, Harlan Coben, Tess Gerritson, are among the A-list endorsers of Box's writing.
But in this humble reader's opinion if this is typical of the series then I'm afraid it doesn't quite live up to the hype. Box doesn't come close to any of them.
The pace is ''too'' slow. The twists are too few and not sharp enough. The strands can be seen coming together from the other side of the range. The pace isn't helped by Box's insistence on giving new readers the back-story. No matter how much skill is deployed in trying to work it in to into rational dialogue in the current context, it still feels a bit laboured. The shame about that is that it's completely unnecessary. Series fans will know all that stuff, and not knowing it wouldn't detract from the current story at all.
If Box had opted for a couple of early asides to set Pickett up as a maverick and then treated the rest of the book as a stand-alone, it would have stood stronger. The plot is self-contained. The linkages can feed from and into the series, but they're not crucial.
I'd like to thank the publishers for sending a copy to the Bookbag.
Further reading suggestion: If the backdrop to the book captures your imagination and you’d like more murderous intent from Wyoming’s remote hills, check out [[Angels Fall by Nora Roberts]]. Bookbag liked [[Back of Beyond by C J Box]] rather better.
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