Shots Fired

Wyoming is the setting for all ten stories in this collection by C. J. Box, the author behind the Joe Pickett novels. Three of the pieces appear here in print for the first time. Together they show a state of wide-open land and small communities where violence and bad intentions can surface without warning.

Four of the stories follow Joe Pickett, the game warden at the center of Box's best-known series. In "One-Car Bridge," he clashes with a landowner whose meanness sets off a chain of terrible consequences. In the title story, what seems a routine check on a radio call turns into an encounter that almost ends his life.

The rest of the book moves further afield. "Pirates of Yellowstone" drops two hard men from Eastern Europe into the American West, where they are badly out of their depth. "Le Sauvage Noble" takes a Lakota man to Paris, where he trades on the French fondness for a romantic image of Native Americans to charm women. Then he meets Sophie, and his easy game turns into something he did not expect.

For readers who know Box from the novels, this is a chance to spend time with Pickett in a shorter, sharper form. For newcomers, it is a quick way to see how he builds tension and a strong sense of place in only a few pages.