Rogue cops face off against rural Idaho town in ‘Blue Heaven’

can anyone save annie and william?

I have read the first couple of books in author Box’s Joe Pickett series, but Blue Heaven (St. Martin’s Press, 2008) is a standalone suspense/thriller about some rogue L.A. cops who retire to Idaho with their ill-begotten gains and proceed to wreak havoc on the rural community. (The title is apparently a real thing, referring to an area of the northwest state where a lot of California police officers move when they retire from the force.) The story starts with a bang, as two young children witness a murder in the woods and are chased by the bad guys. They escape, barely, but then find themselves in danger again and again as they try to make their way home to their mom.

Mom has her own problems, with the not-quite-live-in boyfriend whose conflicts with her young daughter Annie initiated the current mess she and brother William are in, and the local police and town volunteers who are supposed to be searching for her missing kids. But are they all playing for the same team? The reader finds out the answer quickly, but it takes an excruciatingly long time for anyone in the book to see the light. The only person in this small town who seems to have a clue is Jess, a struggling rancher who has his own personal problems with an ex-wife and an adult son struggling with addiction and mental health issues. Into this small-town morass stumbles a retired L.A. cop on the trail of a gang who pulled off a million-dollar heist at a California racetrack and got away with both the money and the murder of an armed guard.

So much of the book is spent following various characters as they stumble around in the dark (both literally and figuratively) that it’s a surprise when the ending comes together fast and furious and confusing. I’m still not exactly sure what happened at the end, to be honest, but I didn’t care enough to go back and try to figure it out. Maybe I’ve gone soft in my old age, but I no longer especially enjoy books that put kids in jeopardy, especially from the opening pages through to the end of the book. There’s no neatly wrapped up happy ending for everyone here, but that’s actually a point in its favor for me. Less so were the almost cartoonish bad guys and the somewhat predictable plot trajectory. I’d rate this one “just OK.”