Cassie Dewell, formerly of law enforcement, is now a private investigator. Exhausted by dealing with corrupt or obfuscating police bureaucracy, she’s put out her own shingle. Now, in service to a defense attorney with a horrible case in front of her, Cassie is in rural Montana – where she will encounter law enforcement so corrupt that what’s she’s dealt with before will seem like Dudley Doright. On a mission to confirm the prosecution’s evidence, she instead fights herself fighting for her life.

The case looks simple: one Blake Kleinsasser is accused of picking up his niece in a drunken state, taking her to a remote area of the family ranch, doing unmentionable things to her, and then leaving her there while he drove off and bed down to sleep off his stupor. Blake was an outsider in the family; he’d left the operation to practice finance on the east coast, and come back when their father was on his deathbed to meddle around with potential inheritance issues. The physical evidence and his niece’s testimony all appear to damn Blake, and Cassie has no interest in pushing things….until it becomes apparent that someone doesn’t like her sniffing around. She finds herself thrown in jail for suspicion of drunk driving with no charges filed; when her client (now her lawyer) springs her out, she discovers that her car with all its research notes has been torched. If Blake is as guilty as he looks, why is someone trying to interfere with her routine, “confirm the prosecution’s evidence” review?

CJ Box has created powerful and dysfunctional family clans before in his Joe Pickett series, and the Kleinsassers are fairly reprehensible. They have an interesting history, being connected to Hutterrite colonies in the United States, but that doesn’t really express itself in the story. What does come out is the fact that this family dominates their county, controlling the local law and enforcement thereof: everyone is terrified of them, both because of their money and because of the means they’ll use to maintain it. Planting evidence, Cassie realizes, is the top of the iceberg where these people are concerned. Box also weaves in a disturbing subplot involving a trucker stalking a school, and sneaking in to plant a gun he can use later; later, when a truck nearly kills Cassie and does kill a potential witness, the apparent stray thread is woven into the main story.

As different as this series is from Joe Pickett, I must say I’m still enjoying it – in part for the western landscape and the rural settings, and because of Box’s characteristic strong development of characters and pacing. I’ll be continuing in this series as grad school and other reading commitments allow. (Or, finishing it this month. You never know with me!)