It’s a new day in Absaroka County, with the old sheriff still in town but coming from another network.
Television is fickle. The show that is the darling one season gets thrown on the slagheap the next. Even the highly rated are not immune; Murder She Wrote, as many of us remember, was cancelled while still in the top 10. Latest on the chopping block—the A&E mystery/western, Longmire.
Over ten years ago Craig Johnson started to give short stories as thank you presents for his newsletter subscribers. Released every Christmas Eve, his fans began to anxiously await the annual treats. Finally there is a collection of these delightful peeks into the life of Absaroka County, Wyoming Sheriff Walt Longmire. Petunia, Bandit Queen of The Bighorns is the one completely original new story but all will be delightful reminders of Johnson's past gifts to his readers.
Thank you TV creators of Oz–first and foremost for the treat that is the Miss Fisher Mysteries. Bringing Kerry Greenwood’s Phrynne (pronounced Fry-knee) Fisher to the screen is a marvelous accomplishment. If you turn the sound down and just watch the scenery and the costumes you will be well entertained, but then you’d miss out on the stories that are well-crafted, based on intriguing history and well-acted.
I read The Cold Dish a few years back and thanks to Craig Johnson’s talents as a born storyteller, felt immediately connected to the modern West of his Walt Longmire. Even a reader like me with great appreciation for but little connection to the American West, who has no experience of guns, and who is vastly ignorant of Indian culture and law enforcement techniques finds she is suddenly comfortable and even mildly conversant about all of the former. (Ask me about Sharps rifles sometime.) Longmire’s Absaroka County in Wyoming is so well crafted that readers can just walk into life in the environs of Durant, Wyoming and the Big Horn Mountains bordering the small town.
At any other time, Absaroka County, Wyoming Sheriff Walt Longmire would have been on the first flight to Philadelphia to be at his daughter's side as she gives birth to his first grandchild. Instead, Walt's loyalty has him accompanying his old mentor and former boss Lucien Connally to Campbell County on of a plea to investigate the suicide of another detective. Gerald Holman's widow insists that he was not suicidal, and her years of experience as a court reporter allow her to recognize when the investigating detectives are telling lies.
Sheriff Walt Longmire is having a rather lonely Christmas Eve in Absaroka County, as his very pregnant daughter, Cady, is grounded in Philadelphia while his girlfriend/significant other, Undersheriff Victoria Moretti, is spending the holiday with her mother in Belize. So Walt is “bacheloring it up” in his office doing his annual holiday reading of A Christmas Carol when he receives an unexpected visitor in the form of an Asian young woman. Evasive about her identity, the woman asks to see the former sheriff and when told that Lucian Connally is not available, requests to see a picture of him before stating that she needs to return something of his.
The thrust of this eighth Walt Longmire novel is two-fold. Walt and his sidekick, the “Bear,” also known as the Cheyenne Nation, are charged with arranging the wedding of Walt’s daughter, a formidable task for the two men.
Only in Absaroka County, Wyoming do the duties of Sheriff Walt Longmire include investigating the very helpful handyman angels that seem to be fixing the roof and cleaning out the gutters of one of the County's elderly and "eccentric" citizens. The helpful angel turns out to be less ethereal and more fleet of foot, and Walt is soon on a manhunt for a fifteen year-old pantsless fugitive.
As we continue with the theme of e-books this week, check out our review of a brand new mystery short story by Craig Johnson featuring his popular character from the TV show and books, Walt Longmire. This short story is available today, April 23 as an e-special only for $2.99.
If it is true that readers of mysteries are the last true romantics (because we believe that justice is still possible in the world), then reading a mystery set in the American West must be a double pleasure. To evoke the American West is to long for what we think were simpler times, with clearer choices and life in the modern West still seems more simple a way of life to the urban sensibility.
