In honor of the premiere of “Longmire,” the new TV series on A&E starting this Sunday and based on Craig Johnson’s mystery series, today I’m reviewing his latest book, As the Crow Flies. Johnson’s series features Walt Longmire, the sheriff of fictional Absaroka County in Wyoming. The highlights of the series are likable characters and difficult puzzles and a sense of the modern American West as almost a character in the novels.
Walt and his best friend Henry Standing Bear are in Montana at the Cheyenne reservation trying to make the final arrangements for Walt’s daughter’s wedding. Although Henry reserved the site at Crazy Head Spring where Cady wants to be married several months earlier, the librarian on the reservation wants it for a Cheyenne language immersion class, and she is not to be denied. Walt and Henry manage to alienate the new Tribal Police Chief, Lolo Long, at first sight as they are on their way to Painted Warrior cliff to see if it will be a good alternate site for the wedding. While they are taking pictures to send Cady, they see a woman and her baby fall from the cliff above them. The woman dies, but the baby lives, and Walt and Henry rush it to the reservation clinic. On the way, Chief Long tries to arrest them.
Things look suspiciously like murder. Chief Long is belligerant and has already made some law-enforcement errors, but after Walt makes a few cogent observations about her job performance and helps her keep her jurisdiction from the FBI, she asks him to teach her to be a police chief.
Although it looks at first as if the girl’s abusive boyfriend may be guilty, Walt is not so sure. After a red truck tries to run him down along the road, he traces the truck to a different suspect. Walt is torn between helping Chief Long with her police work and working Cady’s to-do list.
As well as the cast of recurring characters you expect from a Johnson novel and some interesting new ones, As the Crow Flies continues the hint of Indian mysticism that has appeared here and there in the series, including a peyote ceremony and a conversation with the deceased Virgil White Buffalo (who I miss). Its taste of Cheyenne culture gives it an added dimension.
What? Me Read? 