The Cold Dish by Craig Johnson

As many of you know there is a television show called Longmire on the air, at least it's on Netflix, and I am not sure whether they are still making new shows or not, anyway, this show is based on a series of books by Craig Johnson about a Wyoming Sheriff named, you guessed it, Longmire, well, his full name is Walt Longmire, who is a Vietnam vet that comes home and becomes the Sheriff of Absaroka County in Wyoming. Absaroka County in a mostly quite county where the Sheriff doesn't really have a lot of intense cases, shall we say. The story opens with Walt still recovering/mourning the death of his wife and just kind of making his way through life - imagine losing the person closest to you after several decades, you would probably be a bit numb for a while as well. Walt gets a call from a couple of characters in the county stating that they found a body, now Walt seeing that it is close to the end of the day and wanting to head home to his half-finished cabin (he and his wife were building it together) and some beer decides to hand the "case" off to his deputy figuring it to be all about a dead cow or something.

In the meantime, Mr. Johnson starts to weave in various members of the community that will help to give you a feel of the county and the Sheriff's standing in the place. The pace is a nice steady one that leads to a crescendo later in the book where the body turns out to be one of a young man who got a light sentence for the raping of a Native American, that body turns into two soon enough and now Longmire has two jobs on his hands, solve the murders - both done by similar methods, so the suspicion is there is one killer - and save the remaining young men that appear to be being hunted by the killer. Throughout the story, Mr. Johnson brings Walt Longmire back into the living and shows that he is indeed a well-trained and excellent police officer that does what he can to solve the crimes.

There are a few twists and turns throughout where Longmire slowly but steadily adds to and eliminates from his suspect list, which includes his best friend. Eventually, the culprit is caught and the crime solved which ends up leaving Longmire in a new funk and his friends once again resuscitating him back to life.

I give the book a solid four stars and do recommend reading it. Be forewarned that the television version does take certain liberties with the story, so it is a little different than the book. Contrary to what the producers in Hollywood think though, the book is better by far.