Joe Pickett has a problem. The new governor,  who is a bully and an ass, has discovered that Joe used to do a little investigating for the former governor on the sly,  especially when local authorities were regarded as corrupt and the governor wanted eyes and ears on the ground he could trust.   The new governor seems to think Joe could be his own hatchet-man,   intimidating those he wants to shut up and get out of the way, but that’s not the kind of man Joe is. So, he’s dispatched well out of his district to the middle of nowhere to look for some English woman who’s gone missing after a week spent at a ranch for rich people who like pretending to play cowboy. Fortunately, the last game warden has gone missing,  giving Joe a credible reason for being there. Unfortunately,    Joe seems to have been setup for failure.  He doesn’t have access to the information he needs, the original investigators of the case have been removed,  and someone knows  Joe is there because they break into his room and remove all of the notes and research he does manage to accumulate.  The chicanery here is strong.   The story here is mostly Joe being used and abused by the governor and his staff, who are exemplars of why Americans used to tar and feather politicians: I’m fairly certain that if they’d ever shown their faces instead of hurling orders and abuse over the phone,  at least two noses would’ve gotten broken.  There’s an interesting sideplot that – surprise! – feeds into the main plot, involving Nate Romanowski and eagle permits, since our nature boy is now a successful businessman,  using his falcons as pest mitigation. My favorite part of this novel was the role played by Sheridan Pickett,  who is working on the very dude ranch the English lass hailed from: she’s an active part of the story throughout. The best part of this novel, though, was the line that I used as the caption for the cover. Nate Romanowski is…something else. (I think it helps that I always hear Joe as Roger Clark’s “western” voice used in Red Dead Redemption 2, so the mental delivery is hilarious.)