Lena smiled, this time with her entire mouth.

This little gem aptly displays his skill with just a few words: Johnson is gifted at the ‘show, don’t tell’ style of storytelling, and occasionally I find myself pausing, realizing he just dropped an implication. In this case, Johnson wisely continues to integrate setting, letting Walt play tourist to involve a number of prominent locations in the story. It is a bold authorial choice to take your detective hero out of the home environment so early in a series, particularly when your mystery is so intimately tied to the intricacies of the setting. Walt decides the timing is right to meet his daughter Cady’s boyfriend, so the two decide to make a trip of it. In this book, Henry is escorting a collection of unusual historical photographs out to an exhibition in Philadelphia. Henry is a man of seemingly infinite talents and an artistic soul and when in Wyoming, is often Walt’s ambassador to Native reservations. As in many mysteries, Longmire has a faithful comrade-in-arms, but instead of the generally dopey Watson stereotype, his companion is a far wiser long-time friend, Henry Running Bear. As with many books in the detective fiction, the mystery is deeply imbued with a sense of place, notably the sparsely populated and rugged landscapes of rural Wyoming. Walt Longmire, county sheriff, has over twenty-five years in the field and is supervisor of a very small team of deputies. September 2014 Recommended for fans of straight shooters ★ ★ ★ 1/2Īlthough I have yet to see the A&E tv series Longmire, I’m enjoying my trot (well, okay gallop) through the source material.

Kindness goes unpunished