Death Without Company

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Starred Review Johnson's second Walt Longmire novel more than fulfills the expectations created by the series debut, The Cold Dish (2004). Longmire, the aging, kindly, but tenacious sheriff of Wyoming's Absaroka County, once again finds himself involved in a murder case with tentacles reaching deep into the fabric of daily life in his insular mountain community. It all begins with the death of a Basque woman in an assisted-living home, but the circumstances of that death prompt Longmire and his bantering, foulmouthed deputy, Victoria Moretti, to begin nosing around in the victim's past. The trail leads in multiple directions, most of which converge on Longmire's mentor, former sheriff Lucian Connally. Like C. J. Box in his Joe Pickett series, Johnson uses the landscape of the Wyoming high country to evoke the sense of lives crushing in upon one another, as secrets refuse to stay buried, and old wounds continue to fester. Box's hero, Joe Pickett, is an outsider in his world, however, and Longmire is very much a comfortable part of Absaroka County, a kind of old shoe, in fact, like former sheriff Bill Gastner in Steven Hamill's series set in the very different landscape of Posadas County, New Mexico. Johnson combines a vivid sense of the dailiness of life--and the way human relationships take root in that dailiness--with a sure--handed touch for jolting both his characters and his readers out of their comfort zones and deep into harm's way. It's hard to ask for more in a literary mystery. Bill Ott
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Review
Don’t you dare miss it! -- Tony Hillerman

Johnson delivers great storytelling in an intelligent mystery. -- _The Oregonian_

Johnson has continued a series that should become a ‘must’ read. -- _The Denver Post_