”A life without friends means death without company. (Adiskidegabeco bizita, auzogabeko heriotza.)”--Basque Proverb.One thing that Walt Longmire will never be short of are friends. He also will never have to look far to find an enemy either, but when your bestfriend is a Cheyenne warrior named Henry Standing Bear, tested in the killing fields of Vietnam, you are never in more trouble than the two of you can't climb out of. ”It was three against two, but I had the Indian and that always evened things out.” When a Basque woman named Mari Baroja is found dead at the local assisted living home Walt has no idea how complicated his life is about to become. His friend and mentor Lucian, former sheriff of Absaroka County, and current resident of the same home insists what looks like a natural death is murder. Now Walt has known Lucian for most of his life and he thought he knew everything there was about him. He was wrong.It turns out that Lucian has a relationship with Mari dating back more than fifty years and he still bears a visible dent in his head compliments of her four brothers. These revelations raise more questions especially regarding the disappearance of Mari’s abusive husband Charlie Nurburn. Mari, because she outlived her four brothers, inherited a significant amount of land rich in natural resources. It is starting to get complicated and now Walt has found a motive for murder. The murder weapon of choice is straight out of an Agatha Christie novel. The misidentity aspects of the plot also had me thinking of Dame Christie. As bodies start to pile up I was starting to think a drawing room would be showing up for the final reveal. Walt is soon looking for a 6’5” methamphetamine addict for answers. Hard to hide even in Wyoming when you are even taller than the local sheriff. People remember seeing you. The problem with a man that big, wired on meth, is he can get you killed. Walt has a near death experience trapped under the ice of a river trying to bring this man in for questioning. ”They say that your life passes before your eyes, but that’s not what happens. What happens is that you think of all the things you didn’t get done, big things, small things, all the things that are left.”Remember that Indian, well as long as Henry is breathing Walt will always have a more than even chance of surviving anything. Their relationship is closer than brothers and when you see one the other isn’t far behind. If you mess with one you have to calculate the odds of messing with both of them. My advice don’t mess with them. Wyoming weather will kill you even if you just slip up a little.Walt has woman problems make that women problems. His wife died a few years ago and her presence is a shadow over every woman he looks at with any degree of interest. He is looking at Maggie, a friend, for a moment with wise eyes. ”When I looked she was looking at me with the sea blue at full tide. She smiled just a little and then turned back to Henry. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair to chase a ghost through someone else’s body, to try and capture a part of someone who was lost by taking someone who was found.”Walt also offers some great advice for women.”I looked over at her; if women knew how good they looked in the dash light of oversized pickup trucks, they’d never get out of them.”It’s true, so true. People talk about bar lighting, but dash board lights have that smoky atmosphere beat hands down. I bet it doesn’t hurt the way men look either. Now Walt’s problems with Maggie are minor leagues compared to his issues with his deputy out of Pennsylvania Vic Moretti. ”In the dim glow of the stained glass of the billiard’s light and the Rainier beer advertisements, my chief deputy looked like some courtly renaissance woman, the kind that would poison your wine.”Run you are thinking, run like your boots are on fire and the stream is a mile away. There are reasons why women like Anne Boleyn can tear a king and a kingdom apart. They can change history with...just...one...kiss.”I started to step around Vic but, when I did, she turned and slipped my left hand into a reverse wristlock that suddenly brought my head down to her level. I could smell the alcohol on her breath. The big, tarnished gold eyes blinked as she reached out and nibbled my lower lip, gently sliding into a long, slow vacuum.She kissed like she was pulling venom.Her hand glided down the back of my neck, the nails leaving scorched earth as they went. She pulled her face back, and I wasn’t sure if I could stand. She studied me for the effect, lessening the pressure on my left hand as I rose away from her, willing my injured leg to stop trembling.”To hell with the Catholic church. Oh...wait...wrong century. The evocative scenery of Wyoming and the fickleness of the weather and the cast of characters that Craig Johnson moves around with such deftness and assuredness is not like reading a mystery. It is like drinking a cold beer with your skin stained with work sweat. It is like driving an old pickup that smells of grease and rust. It is like catching lightning in a bottle. A cup of coffee and a Longmire will work fine until you need something stronger to drink.There is humor in the books that for some reason isn’t translating as well to the TV series. It is deadpan and will catch you so unawares that you will laugh out loud. You will become so enmeshed in these characters that when someone does something nice for Walt you will feel like they just did it for you. When they feel pain you will feel a twinge in the same place. Highly recommended for those who like books about the American West or for those who just like great writing. For those who may have missed it here is the link to my review of The Cold Dish
The publisher's blurb compares Craig Johnson to Ace Atkins, Nevada Barr, and Robert B. Parker. I have no idea what they must have been smoking when they wrote that. I have read some from each and Johnson is better. His use of language is far superior and evocative, not to mention the undercurrent of humor. Walt Longmire is someone you would really like to know; Spenser? Not me. This is the second of the Longmire series, the third I have read. Probably not necessary to read them in order, but I have decided to do so except for the one I already read out-of-order. Lucien, Walt's predecessor and mentor in the Sheriff's office, has told Walt he needs to have an autopsy performed on Mari, his fellow resident at the assisted living home. Turns out he had been married to her for three days way back when. The investigation goes back many years and involves Basque culture (did you know that 27% of Basques have O-neg blood type -- as I do, coincidentally -- a normally rare type that is valued as it's the universal donor type. I'm rather proud that I am up to 8 gallons now of donated blood.) Walt's department is such an interesting mix of personalities and stereotype-busters: he has a degree in English lit and quotes Shakespeare; Vic is an ex-homicide detective from Philadelphia with very colorful language. Santiago, the newest addition, is of Basque heritage - Absaroka County has a high percentage of Basques-- who is a linguist. Walt's best friend is Henry Standing Bear who speaks several dialects of Cheyenne (the relationship between the reservation and non-Indians is a recurring theme.)Absaroka County is a mythical county supposedly about the size of Vermont (9200 sq miles similar to the real Femont county, the seat of which is Lander, population 7,800) and the least populated in Wyoming (unlike Fremont County). There is a real Absaroka mountain range along the border of Wyoming and Montana. For those of you who think it might be unrealistic to have such a small department for such a large territory, consider this. I was talking to Donald Harstad, a former deputy sheriff of Clayton County, Iowa who, incidentally, writes a terrific series of stories. Clayton County covers about 728 square miles in NE Iowa. (http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/... said that at any given time at night in Clayton County, the department could field only two deputies for a dispersed population of about 18,000. That means to get to the site of an accident at the far end of the county requires some very high speed driving over very hilly roads. It's a very scary thought. As one who has lived in large cities (Paris, Philadelphia, etc.) but also remote farming areas (the closest grocery store was 25 miles and the closest neighbor where I live now is 3/4 of a mile) I think those who grew up only in cities have little concept of the distances in places like Wyoming where the population is not quite 6 people per square mile. That being said, Harstad provides a better feeling than Johnson of the large distances that must be covered. BTW, I could find no reference to any real Cheyenne Indian reservation in Wyoming. There is an Arapaho and Shoshone reservation in west central Wyoming, but the closest Cheyenne reservation is in South Dakota. Johnson is very good. I intend to read all of them. But read Harstad, too.
What do You think about Death Without Company (2007)?
2.5 stars - It was alright, an average book.Well that was disappointing. After a stellar start to the series, this sequel fell flat for me. There was more action (yawn), less deduction, and the plot was not nearly as engaging as the last book. Vic and Henry's characters are still dependable with delivering snarky quips though, which was greatly appreciated. ---------------------------Favorite Quote: A life without friends means death without company. (A Basque proverb).First Sentence: They used fire, back in the day.
—Cher
I have got to put in a mystery shelf. I can't call this a thriller, not really.Okay first off...I like this book. I plan to continue reading the Longmire books...I recommend them. I say all this because I'm going to say a few critical things about the book, but look I gave it a 4 star rating and recommend it. It's just that the book teetered a few times on the verge of the 3 star rating. In the end however I realized I liked it a good deal and was interested from the first.I thought this one picked up much more quickly than the first volume did. I was really pressed in the first volume to get through the day to day life of conversations and pancake breakfasts. This one didn't drag so much...but we still get to cook and do the "good ol' boy" thing a bit.And believe I'm sort of a "good ol' boy" myself in some ways...I just don't get into reading about it.So what else??? Well my daughter was a huge fan of The X Files. Any of you watch that show? What happened every time poor old Mulder chased a suspect or tried to apprehend anyone??? That's right, he got his butt kicked. Well Walt manages to find a way to lose his gun, fall on his face or nearly get killed. Sometimes this happens in a way that really strains the suspension of disbelief...but it had to happen that way for the book to follow the plot line so....Also there are a few factual misstatements (view spoiler)[if you shoot a "man" no matter how big up close with a magnum 12 gauge shotgun shell it will indeed knock him back and probably remove a leg if you happened to shoot him there. He will not jump up and out run everybody even if he's on meth...or even PCP. (hide spoiler)]
—Mike (the Paladin)
I have so much I want to say about this book! Since there are many, many summaries out there I'm going to skip over that part and go straight to my impressions.I'm a fan of the Longmire series on A&E but I had never thought of reading the books until I was told by a friend that it would give me much better insight into the series. She also cautioned that although the television series is based on the books, I should keep them separate as I was reading.I found this to be very true as I read, and I found that I came to like the character of Sheriff Longmire even more than I already did. The book is told in the first person from his point of view, and his prolonged silences make so much more sense now! I usually really hate reading books written in the first person because the narrator can be difficult to relate to or unreliable, but in this case it really works. This is a man who is blend of humor and tragedy, and this makes him uniquely suited to be the narrator of what can sometimes be a difficult story to tell. Longmire narrates from the perspective of his age and experience: He still feels deep and powerful emotions, but he has created a space in his consciousness where he view and report these feelings dispassionately. What makes him the lawman he is, however, is also what makes it so difficult for him to connect with other people. Thankfully, other characters sense that they are what tether him to reality, and Longmire's greatest asset are the people he surrounds himself with. All of these themes about man against nature/himself, community, and frontier are explored through a prose style I found delightfully pleasant to read. Like so many authors writing in this genre, Craig Johnson could have chosen to get caught up in long-winded descriptions of nature or Native American spiritualism; these elements are present, but they are shared with care and meaning. The people are most important part of the narrative, and Johnson's writing style forces me to slow down and work a little harder to collect the clues. It's a prose style that welcomes the reader and encourages sitting down and resting a spell; it really makes me want to to know what happens next. The theme of community is powerful, and I was surprised by the variety of communities within Absaroka County. It takes a unique personality to survive life on the frontier, and these hardy people put down roots that can reach back for generations. Walt Longmire and his Cheyenne best friend, Henry Standing Bear, have grown up together over a lifetime that has included being enemies before being friends. Lucian, the old sheriff, seems like a Hollywood caricature of the frontier sheriff but, as the book progresses, there is a sense that he maintained law in a place that didn't always have much patience or use for it. Deputy Victoria "Vic" Moretti is the transplant from the big city: she's foul-mouthed and dismissive of this different view of life, but she's also drawn to put down roots and create a home for herself in a place that accepts her the way she is. Young Santiago Saizarbitoria is added in this second installment, and I liked him as much as all the ladies in the story do. The list goes on and on, and it seems like everybody has a story woven into the tapestry of the town; this isn't the big city where neighbors never meet, these people survive by learning to walk the fine line between independence and interdependence.One of this book's most important themes is the sense of place, the American Frontier as a living place. I've heard many people say that Americans don't have a culture like people from other countries, but this isn't true: American culture is steeped in the frontier and even people who live in large urban areas identify with the fierce independence, toughness, and resilience of the pioneer. The frontier is where people who were different went to reinvent themselves, to start over fresh, and the characters in Death Without Company remind the reader of this, but in a thoroughly modern sense. No matter how technologically advanced we get as a society, or how liberal our views become, there are still places in this country where man stands resolute not only against his fellow man and the forces of nature, but also against himself. This is the most excited I've been about a series in a long time, and I find myself both sad and happy. Sad, as in, "Why the heck did it take me so long to start reading this series?" Happy, as in, "There are nine books in this series? Yee haw!"
—Maria
