Blue Heaven by CJ Box

3 books behind. Read two on my trip to Dubai. Time to catch up.

Annie, 12yo, and her younger brother William are the children of the town flirt. Her current fling is the UPS guy who bails on a promise to take the kids fishing. PO'ed, the head off on their own. They approach the spot they want to drop a line in only to be witness to 4 guys killing the 5th in their party. Bad news is they are seen and the chase is on.

The kids have an advantage because they are on their home turf in the backwoods, but newly trendy, mountain valleys of Northern Idaho. With some guile, luck, and the help of a local, they manage to elude the killers who are new to the area.

The bad guys are a group of retired LA cops. A few years earlier, an LA cop retired to Idaho and others have followed. They've sold their tiny SoCal homes and brought the money to Idaho and built their own versions of Monticello. The community of retired cops is nicknamed Blue Heaven.

But this group of 5 (now 4, or was it 6 and now 5?) brought with them some underhanded dealings from a long ago robbery of a race track. They've carefully avoided notice by bank examiners by depositing just under the radar amounts of cash into a 'benevolent fund' with the aid of the local bank prez. The 5th (6th?) of their group was having some issues with his conscious and was deemed negotiable.

Annie and William hide out in the barn of a local rancher about to lose his ranch to foreclosure. Jess Rawlings believes what the kids tell him, but he is still reluctant to act on his suspicions because he doesn't know who to trust. Can't trust the new residents. Not sure about the newly elected sheriff. And no one ever trusts the FBI - they are government and this part of the country doesn't cotton to governmental inquiries. Like it or not, it's up to Jess to keep the kids safe, trap the cops, recovery the money, and get the young'uns back to their mom.

While CJ Box is a MRB fav for his Joe Pickett stories, this is a standalone novel that keeps the welcomed flavor of his Pickett books. Noble loner, wilderness setting, clear lines of good and evil, murky ways of how to do the right thing and not get dead in the process. Don't put this CJ Box novel back on the rack just because it's not a Joe Pickett story. You'd be missing a thrilling ride.

East Coast Don