Any Other Name

June 30, 2014
This action-packed new Walt Longmire adventure has the heroic high-plains sheriff investigating a fellow lawman’s suicide. This requires looking into the late detective’s last case, a cold one involving three county women who went missing some time ago. The trail leads him to Deadwood and the Black Hills of South Dakota. There’s a shoot-out in a blinding snowfall that amidst a large herd of stampeding buffalo, an episode in which two trains race to avoid a head-on collision, and some breathlessly suspenseful moments with Longmire about to be crushed by thousands of pounds of coal. Guidall’s at his avuncular best as Longmire, the novel’s wryly self-deprecating narrator. He also provides an appropriately gravelly croak for the sheriff’s hard-drinking retired boss, Lucian Connally, a deep native American accent for crony Henry Standing Bear, and appropriate assorted masculine voices for the male-heavy cast. He finds a little room in his larynx to squeak out a few respectable female voices, too, leading with undersheriff Vic Moretti. It’s a fast, occasionally funny, non-stop audio thrill ride. A Viking hardcover.

March 24, 2014
A not-quite-cold case preoccupies Walt Longmire in bestseller Johnson’s top-notch 11th mystery featuring the Wyoming sheriff (after 2013’s novella Spirit of Steamboat). Walt reluctantly agrees to help his old boss and mentor, Lucian Connally, investigate the suicide of police detective Gerald Holman in neighboring Campbell County, even though Walt’s official powers stop at the Absaroka County line. Holman apparently shot himself because he had seen too much darkness in his job, but the last cases on Holman’s desk, involving three very different missing women, get Walt thinking. While it looks as if the women just up and left their lives, Walt’s suspicion that the disappearances are connected proves correct. To his peril, he discovers that some people are prepared to go to any lengths to keep the big picture hidden. Meanwhile, Walt awaits the birth of his first grandchild in Philadelphia. Johnson’s hero only gets better—both at solving cases and at hooking readers—with age. 15-city author tour. Agent: Gail Hochman, Brandt & Hochman Literary Agents.