Pierce’s Picks: “As the Crow Flies”

A weekly alert for followers of crime, mystery, and thriller fiction.

As the Crow Flies, by Craig Johnson (Viking):
This eighth installment in Johnson’s series featuring Sheriff Walt Longmire of Absaroka County, Wyoming, could hardly be released at a more opportune moment, given that the new A&E-TV series Longmire, based of course on the books and starring Robert Taylor, is soon to debut--on Sunday, June 3, at 10 p.m. Whether that show will succeed is anybody’s guess at this stage, but the books have already become popular, thanks to a consistently engaging protagonist and the author’s blend of drama, humor, plot complexities, and conscientious character development. As the Crow Flies finds Longmire and his friend Henry Standing Bear out on the Cheyenne Reservation in Montana, scouting locations for the wedding of Longmire’s daughter, Cady. But trouble follows close on their boot heels: They’re on hand when a half-Crow woman, with a bundle in her arms, tumbles from a sandstone cliff. Although she dies, the infant son she was protecting survives. Longmire, far from his own bailiwick, wants no part of the ensuing investigation. However, he’s pulled into it by a newly appointed tribal police chief, Iraq war vet Lolo Long, who’s as impatient and angry as she is attractive, and could benefit from his crime-solving experience. Soon, Longmire is butting heads with her, as well as with federal authorities and Henry’s notorious old pick-up, and undergoing a peyote-spurred vision quest in search of clues. Oh, and he can’t forget that he must still deal with his daughter’s nuptials ...