CRAIG JOHNSON – Junkyard Dogs. Viking, hardcover, May 2010. Trade paperback: Penguin, May 2011.

Genre:   Police procedural. Leading character:   Walt Longmire; 6th in series. Setting:   Wyoming.

First Sentence:   I tried to get a straight answer from his grandson and granddaughter-in-law as to why their grandfather had been tied with a hundred feet of nylon rope to the rear bumper of the 1968 Oldsmobile
Tornado.

    It begins with a severed thumb found within a Styrofoam cooler at the junkyard. Sheriff Walt Longmire decides this might be a way to re-spark the drive in his bullet-shy deputy, Santiago Saizarbitoria. Little did Walt
know that thumb would lead to murders, drugs, kidnapping and family secrets.

    Craig Johnson is a story teller in the classic and best sense of the word. You are captivated with the first sentence and taken along with Walt through the story to the end.

    The characters are alive, real and balance each other beautifully. Walt is the personification of the good man who is intelligent, believes in his job, compassionate in his handling of people and dedicated to justice even when it takes a little bending of the law.

   Deputy Victoria Moretti is the street-wise, profane, East Coast transplant who provides edge to Walt’s calm. Of greater significance is that all the characters, whether recurring or episodic, are fully realized. Johnson’s voice is one to which you cannot help but listen. His dialogue, whether it be Walt’s internal dialogue or that between characters, is audible.

   His humor often causes me to laugh aloud…”It was a two-gallon Styrofoam cooler — one of the cheap ones that you can pick up at any service station in the summer season and then listen to it squeak to the point of homicidal dementia.”

   Sense of place and description can add so much to a story. Here we are in the middle of an exceptionally cold winter in Wyoming and no matter when and where you may be reading the book, you feel that cold.

    This particular book doesn’t convey as much of the openness of the area as some of the previous books, but it does make you aware of how small is the town and the relationships and history of the residents.

    The story builds beautifully, starting out fairly light and the tension building as the story progresses. I was never able to anticipate where the story was going yet the twists never seemed contrived. The element of the metaphysical is there but not overdone.

    As much as I enjoyed the book, and I did, I don’t feel the story is up to the same standard as the previous books. It lacked growth, depth, tension, and focus, both of story and of characters. I do recommend Junkyard Dogs, but really recommend reading the series from the beginning.

Rating:   Good Plus.

The Walt Longmire mystery series —

1. The Cold Dish (2004)

2. Death Without Company (2006)
3. Kindness Goes Unpunished (2007)
4. Another Man’s Moccasins (2008)

5. The Dark Horse (2009)
6. Junkyard Dogs (2010)
7. Hell Is Empty (2011)