The Cold Dish

Everything Craig Johnson writes is worth the read; this is the very first book in his Longmire series, and readers should start here. His writing is a cut above.

Craig Johnson’s The Cold Dish introduces Walt Longmire, long-time sheriff of the fictional Absaroka County, Wyoming. If Walt’s name sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because he has a TV show named for him (Longmire, on Netflix). Some elements of The Cold Dish made it into the pilot episode, while the rest filled out the first season’s climax. I was drawn to this book by the series, as I suspect others before me have been.

That may have been a problem.

The titular “cold dish” is revenge, which drives the action throughout. Two years after four white teenagers are given trivial sentences for raping a developmentally disabled Cheyenne girl, one of the accused rapists turns up shot in the back by an antique rifle. Most everyone in the area believes the boys were guilty and the local Cheyenne still bear a grudge. While Longmire and his band of deputies investigate the murder, more bodies start to pile up.

This book is a traditional mystery, meaning solving the puzzle surrounding the crime at hand is the main point of the plot. In this regard, Johnson’s debut novel does a fine job. The victims come with plenty of baggage, and there are more than enough suspects to keep Longmire and crew busy for much of the book. There are enough of the requisite false leads, lies and mistaken accusations to keep fans of traditional mysteries entertained. You probably won’t guess the villain before Longmire does.

If you’re a fan of this genre, you already know much of what’s going to happen, and you already know Our Hero will solve the crime in the next-to-last chapter. You come back for the characters. So, would you want to spend time with Walt Longmire?

More than likely, yes. He’s a paunchy, middle-aged-plus veteran of small-town crimefighting in the wide-open-spaces West. He has the mandatory Painful Past (recently dead wife, absent daughter, empty house), but he’s at least still able to do his job. He’s plain-spoken, respectful of his environment without fetishizing it, and aware of the ways of the Cheyenne without fetishizing them. He does heroic things without placing much value on being a hero. Johnson’s dialog for Longmire is clean and suits the man.

The people surrounding Longmire are a mixed lot. Walt’s primary sidekicks – Henry Standing Bear, his oldest and best friend, and East Coast transplant Victoria Moretti, his newest deputy – are drawn clearly and well, although Vic does tend to go over the top at times (which may be the author’s intent). The others are more types than people, which I suppose is the luxury a series provides an author – he can color in the details over multiple volumes.

Johnson clearly has a firm grasp on the setting (alpine Wyoming) and provides plenty of atmosphere for the story and his characters. The mountains, the plains, the trees, rocks and scrub, the many faces of fresh or falling snow, the sky’s thousand personalities, all roll easily off Johnson’s pen.

Yet by the end of this, my reaction was more “hmm” than “wow.” Why? There are a lot of little reasons, and one big one.

The little reasons range all over the map. Dialog tics aren’t always confined to a single character; this and Johnson’s sometimes idiosyncratic punctuation and paragraph breaks not infrequently make it hard to tell who is saying what. Johnson adheres to the Trad Mystery Guidebook perhaps too slavishly. It feels like the author’s running out the clock in the last couple of chapters before the denouement. While told in first person, Longmire’s spoken voice isn’t the same one that waxes lyrical about the landscape in the narrative; that latter is the author’s voice, and it’s jarring to hear coming out of Longmire’s thoughts. The villain falls from the sky in the final act; while I mentioned before that you’ll never guess whodunit, it’s not because of clever plotting but rather because the culprit isn’t even in the running until the last minute. And it appears all the ladies of Absaroka County are unaccountably attracted to our crusty, overweight, out-of-shape, nearly over-the-hill sheriff (including Deputy Vic), which makes very little sense and gets intrusive over time.

The big reason? This will infuriate the nobody-can-make-decent-films-of-books posse: the TV series shows what the book could have been, but isn’t.

The sheriff’s department Johnson wrote is staffed with people who mostly get along, set in a town where most everyone likes Our Hero and each other. The one potential irritant in Walt’s command (a wayward deputy) poses no real threat and is dealt with almost as an afterthought. In short, there’s not much conflict or tension beyond the specifics of the crime. As a result, Longmire has an essentially clear field in which to do his work. Perhaps this is Johnson limiting the problems he poses for himself in this debut novel, or perhaps he really meant the county seat of Durant to be West Mayberry.

In contrast, Netflix’s version of Absaroka County is riven with petty rivalries, ancient grudges, prejudice, class and racial animosity, and its share of cranks, creeps and crooks. (Village politics, like those in Henry Kissinger’s academia, are so vicious because the stakes are so small.) TV Walt has a deputy running against him in the election for sheriff, a conniving snake of a local magnate, positional and sexual politics at the stationhouse, and near-open warfare between the ranchers, energy companies, casino developers, Native Americans, meth cookers, hunters, tourists, and roughing-it outcasts. In short, the environment Our TV Hero navigates is far more rich, complex and dramatic than the one literary Walt inhabits, and looks more like the real world. Granted, this took some time to develop, but the seeds were planted in the first few minutes of the first episode. It also helps that TV Walt (Aussie actor Robert Taylor) is, though weathered, a fine figure of a mature man, so it makes more sense that he can do the things he does and also attract the county’s ladies.

The Cold Dish isn’t a bad book, and is certainly worth checking out if you enjoy traditional mysteries not involving Oxford and country manors. Whether you press on after the first installment, however, will depend on what you seek from the series. I expect that fans of the TV series will be disappointed. Perhaps author Johnson adds more flavors to make for a richer stew in subsequent books. Maybe someday I’ll come back to find out – just not in the near future.

All the Longmire books are terrific.. As was the Netflix series

Great characterizations, skilled dialog, a good plot. I enjoyed meeting the sheriff in a tale that moved along.

The only thing I didn’t like was all the filthy language. If that hadn’t been in this book, it would have been a much more enjoyable read.

Wonderfully developed and believable characters and situations used throughout the series.

Outstanding mystery

I have read all of Craig Johnson and have enjoyed his books. However, he is getting darker as the books progress.

Excellent story and so realistic!!

I started this book while traveling through Wyoming. I enjoyed it thoroughly. I would definitely read another installment of the Longmire series.