The Longmire Defense by Craig Johnson
What's It About?
Sheriff Walt Longmire uncovers a cold case that hits very close to home and forces him to put his life on the line with implications that some people would kill to keep buried foreverThe Longmire Defense is New York Times best-selling author Craig Johnson’s 19th book in the long-running Longmire series which debuted in 2004 with The Cold Dish. His superb writing is genre defying literary fiction blended with contemporary frontier western and robust mystery/detective stories laced with generous splashes of humor. The result is always original, brilliantly written and to read them is to indulge in a grand treat. Readers may be tempted to enjoy the current novel twice, once to gulp down the story and the second time to slowly savor every word and nuance. It will be a fan favorite and certain to garner new devotees working well as a standalone novel or as an introduction to the series.
Each Longmire book is set in a single season, compressing 19 years of publishing into fewer than five years. The previous entry, Hell and Back, took place in the depths of winter. Thus, our Vietnam Veteran hero Walt Longmire, the Sheriff of Absaroka County, has not aged significantly in these action packed, death-defying novels. His survival for another season seems less certain in The Longmire Defense as our hero is vastly outnumbered and outgunned when the final showdown begins.
This densely plotted novel is somewhat of a departure as the focus balances between Walt’s past relationships going back to early childhood, including an awkwardly situated marriage proposal, and his present active involvement in several criminal investigations revolving around and connected to a 75 year-old cold case murder. Far more about his family history is revealed than ever before as Walt feels compelled to reexamine the long ago killing of the Wyoming state accountant Bill Sutherland.
He forges ahead despite a strong suspicion that Lloyd Longmire, his late grandfather, may have been “a person of interest.” Additional evidence strongly suggests this death may be intrinsically linked to a clandestine billion dollar mineral slush fund making modern day perpetrators anxious to contain the secrets and willing to silence anyone who attempts to reveal them.
The book begins with a quiet, homely scene of Walt conversing with his daughter Cady, the Wyoming Assistant State District Attorney who has embarked upon a long deferred project of spring-cleaning the remote Longmire mountain cabin. The apple of his eye, beloved toddler granddaughter Lola aka “Peanut” alternately plays with her “Pop Pop” and naps.
They look at photos Cady is dusting and speak lovingly of her mother, his late wife Martha. Cady finds an unfamiliar one taken of seven men, all wearing suits and big cowboy hats standing on the sidewalk outside a bank in Durant, Wyoming. The tallest man, his grandfather Lloyd, is grimly staring out with “nickel-plated gray owl eyes that searched out any flaw.”
VIVIDLY PAINTED
Walt speculates they were board members of the Bank of Durant, a depression era failed bank this consortium of ranchers bought and owned until the mid-1950s. For a time, Lloyd was bank president and board chairman. During his lifetime, he accumulated land as others acquire stamps for their collections, purchasing acreage a tract here, a tract there, until he amassed an impressively sized working ranch consisting of 25,000 acres including a grand, lodge style manor all of which now belongs to his grandson Walt. After ignoring this legacy for decades, it is time to take responsibility for the administration of the estate.
Preferring to avoid conversations about his rocky relationship with his stern, borderline abusive, unforgiving grandfather, Walt simply remarks to Cady they were “a lot alike”. Their chat is interrupted by the arrival of his undersheriff and ladylove, the tough talking Victoria “Vic” Moretti. She persuades him to embark on a search and rescue mission for a young woman lost in the mountain wilderness and The Longmire Defense begins in earnest. Welcome to Absaroka County, Walt’s world and an action packed adventure.
Walt recalled his grandfather was a crack shot and possessed a fearsome temper. Anecdotally, he learned Lloyd had once shot two would-be bank robbers dead as they attempted to rob the Bank of Durant. Walt discovered his grandfather was a highly decorated marine hero of World War I; awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, the French Croix de Guerre as well as other medals for his single-handed actions during the Battle of Belleau Wood. Lloyd had never mentioned being a US Marine or discussed his war service with his grandson who, after college graduation and the resultant loss of his draft deferment, joined the US Marine Corps and served in Vietnam.
Lloyd never congratulated Walt on his achievements, lauded his merits or otherwise displayed any pride in him. He did teach him the game of chess when the boy was six, defeating him with a fiendishly difficult set of maneuvers used by Russian chess champions. In the frontispiece, English chess grandmaster and commentator Nigel Short is quoted, “Chess is ruthless: you’ve got to be prepared to kill people.”
The question Walt seeks to answer is whether his grandfather was among those ruthless killers who murdered the three bank board of director members back in 1948. During the course of his investigation, the adage of “follow the money” is validated and numerous coincidences add up to spell extreme danger for our intrepid sheriff.
IT WILL BE A FAN FAVORITE
The usual cast of characters is present. Vic Moretti is on Walt’s mind when he is not working the case. Lucian Connally makes known his presence when he goes AWOL from the Durant Home for Assisted Living curling up in Walt’s pickup truck for his version of riding shotgun on a five hour trip to Cheyenne’s Archives. Lucian alternately sips liberally from his seemingly bottomless flask of Pappy Van Winkle, arguably Kentucky’s finest but certainly it’s most expensive bourbon, napping or berating Walt for investigating his old friend Lloyd Longmire.
Henry Standing Bear remains a man of few words, most of which include, “go home, Walt”. Ancient Dr. Isaac Bloomfield who has patched Walt up on several occasions provides crucial evidence. Ruth One Heart, daughter of Lloyd’s housekeeper Ella and childhood companion of Walt’s is introduced and plays a key role. After graduating from Wellesley College, she served with US Air Force Intelligence and is now a special agent with the Treasury Department’s Rapid Response Team. Ruth has returned home to Wyoming and one can intuit she will have a continuing role in future Longmire novels.
West Virginia born Craig Johnson has resided in rural northern Wyoming for more than half of his 62 years on acreage he purchased as a young man. He and his wife Judy, proclaimed “White Queen of his heart”, live in a well-outfitted log cabin on 260 acres outside of Ucross at the foothills of Big Horn Mountains near the larger city of Sheridan. Johnson carefully hand built their home, barn and horse corrals by himself using locally grown timber. He recently posted on Facebook before and after photographs of the logs he split into 18 cords of wood in readiness for the coming winter. The same meticulous attention to detail is adhered to in the crafting, rewriting and polishing of his novels and short stories.
Before devoting full time to writing, Craig Johnson acquired character building life experiences including truck driving, rodeo riding, a stint in law enforcement with the park police in NYC’s Central Park and teaching college classes. He was 43 when his first novel, The Cold Dish, was published.
Whether in real life or with fictional characters, it takes time to form bonds and develop deep relationships. With a series, a reader gets to know and deeply connect with the protagonist and in the case of the Longmire series with his friends, associates and family as well. You would like to be able to stop at the Busy Bee Café in the fictional setting of Durant for a cup of coffee, burger or slice of pie. The books are based in fictional Absaroka County, adjacent to the Northern Cheyenne Reservation near the Powder and Bitterroot Rivers.
The descriptions are so vividly painted with words; one can imagine the stark, vast beauty of the Wyoming prairies contrasted with the rugged mountain range. The author’s respect for his adopted land and its inhabitants continues to shine through in his work. His website contains a wealth of information including tour dates and places where you can meet the author, the complete book list, links to short stories, e-stories and copies of his e-mailed responses to questions of general interest.
About the author:
Craig Johnson is the New York Times bestselling author of the Longmire mysteries, the basis for the hit Netflix original series Longmire. He is the recipient of the Western Writers of America Spur Award for fiction, the Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award for fiction, the Nouvel Observateur Prix du Roman Noir, and the Prix SNCF du Polar. His novella Spirit of Steamboat was the first One Book Wyoming selection. He lives in Ucross, Wyoming, population 25.
