Friday, January 22, 2016

Review: "The Cold Dish," Craig Johnson

Mystery review of The Cold Dish by Craig Johnson

By Paul Carrier

Walt Longmire has more than his fair share of problems.

The middle-aged sheriff of Wyoming’s fictional Absaroka County, Longmire is a widower who hasn’t had a date in years. He lives a slovenly, solitary life in an unfinished cabin. His department is understaffed. Only one of his three deputies truly deserves to wear the badge, and she may move on soon. Oh, and he’s having a hard time figuring out who killed Cody Pritchard out by the Northern Cheyenne Reservation.

Pritchard was one of four white boys who, as high-school students two years ago, got suspended sentences for raping a developmentally disabled Cheyenne girl. Now someone has murdered Pritchard with a buffalo rifle.

Was the killer an Indian seeking vengeance? And will the other young men who got off without prison time face a similar fate unless Longmire quickly identifies and apprehends the murderer? When a second rapist is gunned down, the pressure builds to save the two surviving members of the abusive quartet and solve the case.

First published about a decade ago, The Cold Dish launched Craig Johnson’s series about a sly, well-read (he loves literary allusions) and principled sheriff who’s ostensibly eyeing retirement in the not-too-distant future, yet remains immersed in his job.

Aided (and sometimes hindered) by a colorful cast of believable and appealing characters, Longmire relies heavily on his adult daughter Cady, a lawyer who worries about her still-grieving dad; tough-talking Deputy Victoria Moretti, a highly competent transplant from the Philadelphia Police Department; and Henry Standing Bear, a Cheyenne, bar owner and fellow Vietnam War veteran who is Longmire’s best friend. 

That friendship between Longmire and Standing Bear is especially compelling. Thoughtful, articulate and wise in the ways of both whites and Indians, Standing Bear is a truly memorable character who is devoted to Longmire and routinely comes to his aid, both professionally and personally. In a larger context, the sometimes uneasy relationship between local whites and the Cheyenne is a central element of The Cold Dish. So are the Indians' traditions and beliefs, which figure prominently in a lyrical and unforgettable scene involving a rescue operation during a blizzard.

"There's a lot of dramatic conflict in this region -- between opposing tribes, between tribes and the white population,” Johnson, a Wyoming resident, told the Los Angeles Times several years ago. “It’s a very multilayered region of the country."

Johnson's series made the transition from print to the small screen in 2012, when the A&E Network premiered Longmire. After three seasons there, the show migrated to Netflix, which made a fourth season available online and has announced that a fifth season is in the works.

I'm a big fan of the TV series, but it fails to capture one of the great charms of Johnson's protagonist: his dry wit. Perhaps that's because Longmire's sense of humor is easier to convey in print. He narrates The Cold Dish and some of his best "lines" come from interior monologues, a device that is not used in the TV series. The novel could be described as a happy blend of the droll and the dramatic with, of course, the inevitable suspense of a police procedural.

The universally-despised Pritchard, we learn, “had his mother’s looks, his father’s temper, and nobody’s brains.” Noting that shower curtains have a penchant for attaching themselves to the human body, Longmire describes becoming "a vinyl, vacuum-sealed sheriff burrito" whenever he showers at home. The reader learns that Longmire has no access to cable or satellite at his cabin, so “the only thing you could pick up was Channel 12 with snow for a picture and a soothing hiss for sound. I watched it religiously.”

Longmire’s turf is billed as the least populous county in the least populous state, so although he respects technology, he “has to rely on his instincts” more than other cops do, Johnson said in a 2014 interview with The Denver Post. "Longmire has seen some bad stuff in his life," Johnson told the Los Angeles Times in 2008. "He certainly believes in the goodness of humankind even as he deals with his share of, for lack of a better word, evil.”

The reader, in turn, comes to believe in the goodness of Longmire, and in his appeal as a conscientious and likable protagonist who tries to uphold the law in a stunningly beautiful western setting that is both mythical and convincingly contemporary.