If the whole state of Wyoming seems isolated, the Red Desert is where local loners and iconoclasts go when they really want to go off the grid. In C.J. Box's 17th Joe Pickett novel, Joe's ex-Special Forces friend and fugitive outlaw Nate Romanowski ("kind of a homicidal libertarian folk hero") is tracked down by two men from unnamed federal agencies. They strong-arm him into taking his guns and Jeep CJ-5 to the desolate Red Desert to help stop a cyber-terrorist organization and its charismatic Saudi-born, U.S.-educated leader. At the same time, Wyoming's blunt anti-Washington Governor Rulon orders Game Warden Joe to go to the Red Desert to sniff out what the Feds are doing "strutting around my state... bigfoot[ing] within our borders." Rulon justifies this off-the-books assignment to Joe because "your talent for bumbling around until the situation explodes into a bloodbath or a debacle is uncanny." Joe uncovers a suspicious tavern while Nate roots out an abandoned ranch with stolen 18-wheelers, Yemeni gun-toters and a bomb shelter full of techies. One bad thing leads to another, until Nate is alternating shots from his .454 Casull and .500 Wyoming Express as Joe and his M14 carbine have his back.
Box's Joe Pickett novels are first-rate, thought-provoking entertainment. They dig into timely dangers set against the Wyoming landscape, with characters both sensitive and violent, apolitical and high-principled, regular hardworking "joes" and edgy, independent mystics. Few can touch Box for spinning a good story while also making readers ponder right and wrong. Off the Grid is among his best. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.