A book about an undead lawman? Sort of.
Longmire treads new territory in the 18th full installment.
After eighteen years of annual installments in a series, I think it’d be tough for any writer to keep a series fresh, and there have certainly been speed bumps with the Longmire books. Some have only been three-star affairs for this reader, though still enjoyable.
HELL AND BACK, the most recent release, was really good though. And very different from its predecessors.
It’s hard to sum up the story without getting into a ton of details from earlier in Walt Longmire’s career, so I’ll sum it up thusly: while working a case, Walt is wounded and left for dead on a road in Montana. He wakes up in a small town, suffering from mild amnesia, but it’s not a typical amnesia story where he forgets who he is until the end. His memories come back to him pretty quickly.
The scary part is that as he figures out who he is, it also dawns on him that he might be dying…or already dead. Especially when deceased characters from previous volumes start showing up in this small town, where nobody can leave and the sun never rises.
(For me, I let out an audible holy crap when Tomas Vidarte showed up.)
Craig Johnson had to be careful not to overplay his hand with such a speculative concept, and he does it extremely well here. For the first time you get third-person writings from Henry and Vic’s perspectives, as they’re trying to figure out where Walt is and what kind of shape he’s in. This book also relies somewhat heavily on details revealed in some of the Longmire short stories, namely THE HIGHWAYMAN.
If you haven’t read the series, start it. If you hit a volume that wasn’t as exciting as the others, power through. It’s worth it to keep going. Great book, great series.