These days when Joe Pickett is building fences, it’s on his wife’s mother’s husband’s ranch property, rather than for the State of Wyoming. Joe’s tendency to get into trouble pursuing the truth, coupled with the appointment of a vindictive weasel as Game and Fish’s new director, got him fired as game warden…..but Wyoming’s colorful new governor is on the horn with an offer that might get Joe back in the field. Something funny is going on in Yellowstone National Park: a lawyer just got off the hook there for murdering four people in an area, and the four victims were not randomly chosen. The park rangers aren’t moving at a brisk enough pace for the governor, and knowing Joe’s tendency to gnaw on a problem until he’s gotten to the bottom of it, the governor wants Joe to investigate — unofficially, mostly — on his behalf. Free Fire offers a lot to the reader, but the star is Yellowstone National Park itself,

So, about those murders and the lawyer getting off: turns out because of Yellowstone’s unusual legal history — it was constituted before the two states whose land it’s within were made states — there’s a small stretch of land where a jury cannot formed, and crimes can theoretically not be legally prosecuted. A lawyer, McCann, used that fact to kill four people, but he did so not out of mere sociopathy, but for some ‘underground’ scheming, shall we say. Although this book doesn’t get into deep emotional water like some previous books, it’s not just an action thriller: for Joe, Yellowstone is the source of old pain, being the site of his younger brother’s suicide. The wonder of Yellowstone, though — a place where the Earth itself is alive, shooting forth geysers and sending tremors underfoot — largely helps override the pain, as does the work itself. When Joe arrives, the park rangers are not happy to see him: they’re federal employees with little regard for state authorities, and they’re wary of the unconventional new governor, a folksy populist who is intent on leaving his own mark on the office. One of the rangers, though, takes to Joe, finding him a man very much like her husband. Over the course of two weeks, they get to be friends despite her wariness of his real mission (his cover is that he’s there to interview everyone and compile a summary report for the governor). She proves a useful ally, as does Joe’s mysterious friend Nate, the falconer with the shady past who is very much wanted by the government. As you might guess, Joe finds trouble — and he also finds someone unexpected from his past.

Free Fire was quite different from the other books in this series, though no less a page turner. I liked the dramatic change of scenery, and learning about the geology — and biology! — that makes Yellowstone such a unique park. It looks like from the premise of the next book that Joe Pickett, Secret Agent Man, will continue riding for the colorful governor, so I’m looking forward to that.

“This is Mormon country,” Toomer said. “No bars.”
“Mormons drink,” she said. “Especially if there’s just one of them. I’ve seen ’em go at it at Rocky’s. If there’s two, they watch each other and neither one will drink. It cracks me up.”
“That’s what they always say in elk camp,” Toomer said, laughing with loud guffaws. “If a Mormon comes and he’s alone, hide the whiskey!”

(I’ve heard a different version of this: always invite two Baptists go to fishing with you unless you want one of them to drink all your beer.)