Death Without Company by Craig Johnson

Back to the fictitious Absaroka County in Wyoming and its old school sheriff Walt Longmire. He’s been the county sheriff for 25y having replaced another long timer and confirmed bachelor (everyone thought), Lucien Connelly. Lucien lives in an assisted living facility and works as Longmire’s weekend dispatcher. A woman at the facility’s nursing home has died. Lucien is convinced she was murdered. Yes, Mari Baroja was very ill, but Lucien knew her and thinks there was reason to expect a motive.

Mari was Basque, daughter of one of four Basque brothers who owned a large sheep ranch and the sole surviving heir to that property, and the abused wife of one Charlie Nurburn whom no one seems to know if he’s dead or just ran off back around 1950. She lived her life in Absaroka County, but Longmire didn’t know her. That doesn’t matter. She lived in the county and that made her Longmire’s responsibility.

She was also Lucien’s wife . . .

 . . . for about 3 hours when they were in their late teens until her father and uncles found out and had the marriage annulled. As adults, Lucien and Mari met every Thursday. Most of their contemporaries knew of the affair, but not Longmire. That was news to him.

While Mari lived a life no one should've had to endure at the hands of Nurburn, after he disappeared the four brothers started buying up property surrounding their ranch. Now this left Mari with substantial land holdings in the Powder River basin, but she still lived simply. In recent years, natural gas exploration showed that the ranch sat above extensive gas deposits that were leased by an energy cooperative. Result? Mari is filthy rich and that brings out her money grubbing children and the outside chance that Charlie may have fathered a child with a Cheyenne woman.

This is #2 in the Longmire series and I see many, many more in my future; already have another reserved at the library. Johnson’s Longmire is a bit more talkative than TV's portrayal, being quicker with a joke or a quip. And in this book, Johnson gives us a really good idea of life in Wyoming before, during, and after a snowstorm. As the layers of the onion are peeled during the investigation, Longmire has to deal with Mari’s family, Lucien’s reticence to reveal more about his past, his trash-mouth deputy Victoria (aka Vic), the assisted living facility, a new deputy whose interview becomes more of an OJT trial, gas company roughnecks, the intricacies of the Wyoming laws about parentage and inheritance, and various levels of the Cheyenne nation. Needless to say, the investigation takes more turns than a Bighorn Mountain logging road. And as most readers of good mysteries will tell you, the back twisting back roads are far more interesting than an interstate. Can’t wait to get back to the county roads of Absaroka County.

Available in print or Kindle at Amazon

 

East Coast Don