DEATH WITHOUT COMPANY (2006) ****
by Craig Johnson
This paperback edition published by Penguin, 2006, 271pp
© Craig Johnson, 2006
ISBN: 978-0-14-303838-2
Blurb: When Mari Baroja is found poisoned at the Durant Home for Assisted Living, Sheriff Longmire is drawn into an investigation that reaches fifty years into the mysterious woman’s past. Her connections to Wyoming’s Basque community, the lucrative coal-bed methane industry, and the personal life of the previous sheriff, Lucian Connally, lead to a complex web of half-truths and assumed alliances. Aided by his friend Henry Standing Bear, Deputy Victoria Moretti and newcomer Santiago Saizarbitoria, Sheriff Longmire must connect the present with the spectre of the past to find the killer.
Comment: Craig Johnson’s follow-up to his exceptional The Cold Dish is another winner. The plot this time is a little more straightforward, and almost conventional in that it deals with murder linked to a family inheritance, but there are several twists along the way. Johnson’s characters again leap off the page and the writing is as witty as before. His descriptions of the Wyoming landscape, conjure up visions of the icy conditions of a winter in the state. The banter between Walt and his friends and colleagues is priceless and lifts the book from a competent mystery into something more sublime. You like to spend time with the sheriff. You respect his values. You admire his determination to get to the truth. We also get to meet Walt’s Philadelphia-based lawyer daughter, Cady, for the first time as well as a new deputy in the Basque Santagio Saizabitoria. Walt has inherited a dog too. The book is such a pleasure to read you immediately want to dive into the next – this edition contains the first chapter of the third book, Kindness Goes Unpunished, as well as an interview with the author and some questions for reading groups.
