The Western Star - (Longmire Mystery) by Craig Johnson (Paperback)

About the Book

Includes an excerpt from the author's book Depth of Winter.

Book Synopsis

Sheriff Walt Longmire's trip down memory lane leads to a mystery in the present in this mystery from New York Times bestselling author Craig Johnson

The hit drama Longmire is now streaming on Paramount+

Walt is enjoying a celebratory beer after a weapons certification at the Wyoming Law Enforcement Academy when a younger sheriff confronts him with a photograph of twenty-five armed men standing in front of a Challenger steam locomotive. It takes him back to when, fresh from the battlefields of Vietnam, then-deputy Walt accompanied his mentor Lucian to the annual Wyoming Sheriff's Association junket held on the excursion train known as the Western Star, which ran the length of Wyoming from Cheyenne to Evanston and back. Armed with his trusty Colt .45 and a paperback of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express, the young Walt was ill-prepared for the machinations of twenty-four veteran sheriffs, let alone the cavalcade of curious characters that accompanied them.

The photograph--along with an upcoming parole hearing for one of the most dangerous men Walt has encountered in a lifetime of law enforcement--hurtles the sheriff into a head-on collision of past and present, placing him and everyone he cares about squarely on the tracks of runaway revenge.

Review Quotes

"Walt Longmire still bears the impenetrable stoicism of the American West balanced with an irrepressible humanity . . . he is balanced, like the West itself, by poetry, sensitivity and culture--a character of tremendous strength and sometimes surprising violence." --The Washington Post

"Bestseller Johnson pays homage to Agatha Christie in his cleverly plotted [The Western Star] . . . And [he] winds up the whodunit with a solution that Christie could never have imagined." --Publishers Weekly

Praise for Craig Johnson and the Walt Longmire Mystery Series

"It's the scenery--and the big guy standing in front of the scenery--that keeps us coming back to Craig Johnson's lean and leathery mysteries." --The New York Times Book Review

"Johnson's hero only gets better--both at solving cases and at hooking readers--with age." --Publishers Weekly

"Like the greatest crime novelists, Johnson is a student of human nature. Walt Longmire is strong but fallible, a man whose devil-may-care stoicism masks a heightened sensitivity to the horrors he's witnessed." --Los Angeles Times

"Johnson's trademarks [are] great characters, witty banter, serious sleuthing, and a love of Wyoming bigger than a stack of derelict cars." --The Boston Globe

"The characters talk straight from the hip and the Wyoming landscape is its own kind of eloquence." --The New York Times

"[Walt Longmire] is an easy man to like. . . . Johnson evokes the rugged landscape with reverential prose, lending a heady atmosphere to his story." --The Philadelphia Inquirer

"Stepping into Walt's world is like slipping on a favorite pair of slippers, and it's where those slippers lead that provides a thrill. Johnson pens a series that should become a 'must' read, so curl up, get comfortable, and enjoy the ride." --The Denver Post

"Johnson's pacing is tight and his dialogue snaps." --Entertainment Weekly

About the Author

Craig Johnson is the New York Times bestselling author of the Longmire mysteries, the basis for the hit drama series Longmire. He is the recipient of the Western Writers of America Spur Award for fiction, the Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award for fiction, the Nouvel Observateur Prix du Roman Noir, and the Prix SNCF du Polar. His novella Spirit of Steamboat was the first One Book Wyoming selection. He lives in Ucross, Wyoming, population twenty-six.