As usual, Johnson makes the most of his colorful material. In the opening pages of his third and latest adventure, Kindness Goes Unpunished, we meet up once again with Dorothy (owner of the Busy Bee Café) and Henry Standing Bear (the sheriff's Cheyenne friend) and encounter town characters Omar and Myra Rhoades, a local divorced couple whose stormy reunions feature high-powered weaponry and require police intervention. But while Hillerman's cast of characters has been pretty much cop-centric, Johnson's books serve up a whole community and showcase Longmire's deep sense of responsibility for it. And there was definitely a nod to the best works of Tony Hillerman. The first two entries in this series, The Cold Dish (2004) and Death Without Company (2006), had satisfyingly complex plots revolving around Native American issues and Western land deals.
Sans local crime lab assistance and reliable mobile phone service, Sheriff Longmire relies on his skills at reading the land and reading the people in a tight-lipped community where long-concealed grudges can, and do, lead to murder. The wide-open spaces of fictional Absaroka County offer opportunities to commit a crime, sight unseen, and plenty of ways to conceal the evidence in the often storm-torn high-country desert.
It's a spine-tingling throwback to a tougher era. This has made Craig Johnson's Walt Longmire series, set in rural Wyoming, a true standout. In this era of street corner surveillance cameras, data warehousing and DNA tests, urban sleuthing - in fiction as in real-life - is suddenly all about keying in the numbers and calling in the SWAT teams. Review | Kindness Goes Unpunished by Craig Johnson
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