Cowboys and Introspection: The Dark Horse

We still haven't finished our review copy of Craig Johnson's The Dark Horse—but only for the best of reasons: We wanted to start with the first book, which inspired us to plow through. We finished the fourth book, Another Man's Moccasins, last night.

The series centers around Walt Longmire, sheriff in rural Wyoming (redundant?). You might think mysteries would be thin on the ground in the middle of nowhere, but four books in, the series hasn't wandered into absurdity. (Paging Harry Bosch.)

Like most series detectives, Longmire flirts with cliche: He's a Vietnam vet, he's prone to quoting Shakespeare, he's ready to retire—maybe, he's a widower who's catnip to the ladies, he's never satisfied with the easy answer, he absorbs an impressive amount of punishment and a Wolverinesque healing factor between books. He's a cowboy with an Indian "sidekick" (paging Graham Greene) and a sexy, foul-mouthed deputy (paging Angelina Jolie).

Like good series detectives, though, Longmire transcends familiarity, becoming a recognizable tendency to worry that he's not being the man he could be. (Paging...Jeff Bridges?) And like most series (while they're still good), the mysteries are a convenient way to explore territory—not with Faulknerian skill, but with a character who can namecheck Faulkner in a town called Absalom.

The Longmire series lets Johnson explore and expose rural Wyoming while selling books. He digs into the ways even the heartiest sections of the heartland are modernizing. Though Longmire, conveniently for mystery building, is one of those old-school guys who doesn't use Google or a computer or even a cell phone.

Craig Johnson reads from The Dark Horse, the fifth book in the Longmire series, at the Bellevue Regional Library tonight at 7pm, and at the Seattle Mystery Bookstore tomorrow at noon.