DEPTH OF WINTER (2018) ***
by Craig Johnson
This hardback edition published by Viking/Penguin, 2018, 292pp
© Craig Johnson, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-52247-8
Blurb: Welcome to Walt Longmire’s worst nightmare. Winter is creeping closer, but for Sheriff Longmire this one is looking to be harsh in a way to which he is wholly unaccustomed. He has found himself in the remotest parts of the northern Mexican desert, a lawless place where no horse or car can travel, where no one speaks his language or trusts an outsider, far from his friends and his home turf back in Wyoming. But desperate times call for desperate measures. Tomas Bidarte, the head of one of the most vicious drug cartels in Mexico, has kidnapped Walt’s beloved daughter, Cady. The American government is of limited help and the Mexican one even less so. Armed with his trusty Colt .45 and a father’s intuition, Walt must head into the 110-degree heat of the desert, one man against an army.
Comment: The 14th novel in Craig Johnson’s Sheriff Walt Longmire mystery is a departure for the series, in that it merely serves to provide some closure around the story arc surrounding drug lord Tomas Bidarte, who at the close of the previous book, THE WESTERN STAR, had kidnapped Longmire’s daughter Cady. Here Walt goes off-radar deep into Mexico to rescue her. Along the way, he is helped by sympathetic locals leading to his ultimate confrontation with Bidarte at an isolated monastery. The lack of the usual supporting characters is felt here, and the book suffers as a result, missing the usual witty banter. We are left with a personal vendetta-fueled hunt that increasingly relies on plot conveniences and suspension of disbelief. The tension does build during the final act, but the darkness of the story and many of the characters make it an often, and unusually, heavy read.
