★★★★☆ HE HAS TEETH. SHE HAS A GUN. THEY ARE THE LAW.

Wild Country

Anne Bishop

Anne Bishop likes cops. I can say with certainty that she likes them as characters in her books. Wild Country is the seventh novel in the Others and the World of the Others series. Each of these seven novels features policemen prominently. Monty (Crispin James Montgomery) is one of the most important characters of the five Meg Corbyn novels. Lake Silence has Wayne Grimshaw. Furthermore, I suspect that Bishop likes cops in real life, too. They are not universally good guys in her books -- there are bad cops. But those who are main characters are presented sympathetically.

Wild Country, however, is the first novel of Others that features a cop as protagonist. That would be Jana Paniccia. Jana fought hard to become a cop. The police academy in Hubbney had little use for women, and her classmates didn't think a woman could be a good cop. She emerged successful, and also with a giant chip on her shoulder. If you suggest to Jana that there is no place for women in law enforcement, you'd better be ready for a fight.

Virgil Wolfguard is the sheriff of Bennett. Most of the action of Wild Country takes place in Bennett. Bennett is a small settlement in the Midwest whose human population was extinguished by terra indigene elders after the humans attacked Earth natives such as the Wolfguard. Virgil is out of sympathy with humans. (He hates them.) Unfortunately for him, though, Tolya Sanguinetti, who has taken charge of Bennett, wants to bring back a human economy in Bennett. Tolya calls himself mayor of Bennett, but Bennett is not a democracy. Tolya was installed as mayor by terra indigene elders and is more king than mayor.

Tolya, realizing that Virgil as the sole law enforcement officer of a human town is problematic, recruits Jana. So, we have a buddy cop story with Virgil-who-hates-humans and giant-chip-Jana. It's fun.

I am not sure what real-world location Bennet might correspond to. There is a place (not quite a town) in the country south of Chicago that you can find by searching for "Bennett, IL," and it might be that. But we have definitely left the familiar upstate New York settings of the previous six novels for a location I do not know well. Wild Country is contemporaneous with Etched in Bone. If you have read the Meg Corbyn novels (which I would recommend), you will recognize many of the events that take place in Wild Country, and some of the characters.

I enjoyed it. Jana and Virgil make a good pair. I will continue to read the series, of which only one novel, Crowbones, remains. I am, in fact, sufficiently entertained and intrigued to look out for other novels by Bishop.

Wild Country on Amazon

Goodreads review

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