Warning: This review contains partial/mild spoilers for Endangered. 

While attending a rally for a governor’s race on behalf of his wife-the-librarian who needs the presumed gubernatorial winner’s support to renovate her library,  Game Warden Joe Pickett bumps into the current governor – a man who has used Joe as a special agent, of sorts, investigating things on the sly.  With a twinkle in his eye and only months left to serve, Governor Rulon gives Joe one final mission. Seems a remote rancher friendly to the governor had been letting one Nate Romanowski hide within his acreage until late,   but four G-men came and forced the rancher to lead them to Nate:  the feds and Nate all disappeared together.  Governor Rulon hates feds, but he hates, double-hates, loathes entirely feds who run around his state without giving notice, especially when they’re accosting his citizenry. He wants Joe to employ his special talent for “bumbling around until a situation explodes into a bloodbath or a debacle” and head up there and investigate.  

Off the Grid is appropriately named, as it takes Joe deep into the Wyoming wilderness, into the Red Desert, far from both civilization and help from above.   What the reader knows and Joe doesn’t – since we’re also getting Nate’s perspective – is that the g-men were not from any one  knock-knock-oh-no-we-shot-your-dog agency,  but from a shadow cabal  of likeminded agents across multiple levels of government and law enforcement who seek to preserve American interests regardless of the law.   If you’re a Star Trek fan, they’re basically Section 31 but without the weird black leather fetish.  Section 31 has offered Nate a deal: help us find a terrorist hiding out in the wilderness, and  your criminal history – your entire paperwork existence in the federal bureaucracy  – will disappear. For a man obsessed with staying off the grid and out of society,  it’s a promising offer, especially since it also means his new girlfriend’s criminal record (acquired helping him escape) will disappear.  He doesn’t trust him, but he has to go along for the moment.

Off the Grid is a straight-up action thriller, and unique in that while there are three storylines, they converge fairly quickly in the red desert, though the involved parties don’t realize it immediately. Readers used to this series will suspect Joe and Nate are the ‘interested parties’ roaming around the desert not knowing the other is there, but I’ll keep the third under my hat for spoiler reasons.  The gist of the story is that there’s an Arab fella hanging out in an old sheep ranch who Section 31 thinks is up to no good, and they’re mostly right. We get to encounter the Arab (“Ibby”) through Nate, who bonds with him over falconry, and learn that he’s the son of an diplomat who was raised in the US and evidently likes its Constitution more than the government does, as he’s plotting to take action against an NSA data center to strike a blow for the Fourth Amendment. He’s building a movement, but he also has a standard-issue Islamic terrorist-type friend who the reader will immediately begin giving the side-eye, and wondering if Ibby is just an extremely talented salesman who is selling Nate Saudi terrorism disguised by libertarian wrapping paper.   This is especially the case given that both Nate and Joe are attacked by parties who obviously want whatever’s going on in the ranch to remain a secret.

I remember a time when people were still concerned about the amount of data hoovered up and analyzed by the government: Ed Snowden was writing articles, Rand Paul was denouncing it in speeches, etc, and  there was some talk of states indirectly undermining big brother by denying water to their data centers, which they need to keep the computers cool.  This connects to that era, but having a diplomat’s son so passionate about civil libertarianism was an immersion breaker for me:  granted,   by the grace of God I live in neither DC nor NYC and have never encountered a pompous diplomat, but it’s hard to believe that an outsider’s child would care so much about the Constitution. Perhaps if we had more time to get to know the character, like Nate:  it’s not helped by the fact that every moment the reader spends with Ibby,   Achmed the Aching to be Dead Terrorist is standing right next to him looking all suspicious-like. 

Although the premise is again a little suspect –   Muslim terrists in Wyoming? –   the execution and humor were superb. I will sorely miss the Governor when he leaves, and I enjoyed Joe and Nate’ reunion here: they’ve been separated by Nate’s promise to the feds to avoid contact with the Pickett family, given the amound of bloodshed and explosions that appear to happen around Joe & Nate. (Off the Grid has no shortage of both.)  The third angle also heightened the stakes considerably. 

Quotes:

“I’m not your man. I’m not political. I just want to live my life and be left alone.
“Then you’re political. Welcome aboard.”

“You’re kind of a homicidal libertarian folk hero.”

“It’s odd seeing someone sitting on a stool not checking their phone,” he said. He realized he’d assumed that’s what she’d been doing with her back to them.
“It’s known as a book,” she said.
“I remember them.”
“Edward Abbey,” she said. “Desert Solitaire. I just finished The Monkey Wrench Gang.”
“This does seem like a place where George Washington Hayduke might show up.” He’d read the novel in college. Her eyes widened with recognition and surprise.
“I guess all game wardens aren’t the same,” she said.

“I’ve got to take this call. It’s important state business and I’m still the governor. It doesn’t concern you people”—he was now addressing someone else in his office—“even though you think everything concerns you. So why don’t you folks go out and wander around town and target some people to fine and regulate? There should be some honest, hardworking citizens you can find to shake down. Maybe someone has an oversized toilet tank or they’re using the wrong kind of dishwasher soap. That’s what you do, right?”

“How about we worry about that later?” Joe said. “Right now we’ve got six people, three falcons, and a dog, and we need to try and get out of here in one Jeep. Not to mention, there are trucks out there filled with killers on the way to the interstate highway system.” Nate laughed grimly. Without looking over his shoulder, he said,
“Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?