Helpful Score: 2
First Line: I tried to get a straight answer from his grandson and granddaughter-in-law as to why their grandfather had been tied with a hundred feet of nylon rope to the rear bumper of the 1968 Oldsmobile Toronado.
It's February, and it's cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey in Absaroka County, Wyoming. As much as Sheriff Walt Longmire would like to stay inside his nice warm jail, folks just aren't going to accommodate him. An old man (and owner of the town dump) has been dragged behind a car. One of his deputies is suffering from "bullet fever", so Walt gives him the task of tracking down the owner of the severed thumb found in a cooler there in the junkyard. His Pennsylvania deputy, Victoria Moretti, is trying to buy a house, and it seems to have made her a tad ill-tempered. The owner of a new housing development that borders the junkyard has to have his feathers smoothed down....
What's a sheriff to do? Especially when an interesting side business is found in the dump followed by the discovery of two bodies. Winter refuses to behave itself (as if it ever has).
It is such a pleasure to read a book written by Craig Johnson. He is a born storyteller. He can make you laugh. He can make you cry. The Wyoming setting and every single character is etched crystal clear in your mind.
There's a reason why I live in the Sonoran Desert: I am not a winter person. I do not "do" cold. When I discovered that this book took place in the winter, I quite literally shivered. However, Craig Johnson is one of the few writers who, for me, can put poetry into a season I loathe. Try this on for size:
"It was Monday of the second week in February and people talked less because their words were snatched from their mouths and cast to Nebraska. I had an image of all the unfinished statements and conversations from Wyoming piled along the sand hills until the snow muffled them and they sank into the dark earth. Maybe they rose again in the spring like prairie flowers, but I doubted it."
I have come to view reading a Craig Johnson novel as a visit with a beautiful place, as catching up with a group of characters I've come to know and love, and as an exercise in deduction as I try to identify The Bad Guy. Junkyard Dogs satisfies on all these levels, and Craig Johnson continues to be an author that I wish everyone would read at least once.
I'm willing to bet the farm that, for many of you who do sample his writing, it will be the start of your own love affair with Absaroka County.
It's February, and it's cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey in Absaroka County, Wyoming. As much as Sheriff Walt Longmire would like to stay inside his nice warm jail, folks just aren't going to accommodate him. An old man (and owner of the town dump) has been dragged behind a car. One of his deputies is suffering from "bullet fever", so Walt gives him the task of tracking down the owner of the severed thumb found in a cooler there in the junkyard. His Pennsylvania deputy, Victoria Moretti, is trying to buy a house, and it seems to have made her a tad ill-tempered. The owner of a new housing development that borders the junkyard has to have his feathers smoothed down....
What's a sheriff to do? Especially when an interesting side business is found in the dump followed by the discovery of two bodies. Winter refuses to behave itself (as if it ever has).
It is such a pleasure to read a book written by Craig Johnson. He is a born storyteller. He can make you laugh. He can make you cry. The Wyoming setting and every single character is etched crystal clear in your mind.
There's a reason why I live in the Sonoran Desert: I am not a winter person. I do not "do" cold. When I discovered that this book took place in the winter, I quite literally shivered. However, Craig Johnson is one of the few writers who, for me, can put poetry into a season I loathe. Try this on for size:
"It was Monday of the second week in February and people talked less because their words were snatched from their mouths and cast to Nebraska. I had an image of all the unfinished statements and conversations from Wyoming piled along the sand hills until the snow muffled them and they sank into the dark earth. Maybe they rose again in the spring like prairie flowers, but I doubted it."
I have come to view reading a Craig Johnson novel as a visit with a beautiful place, as catching up with a group of characters I've come to know and love, and as an exercise in deduction as I try to identify The Bad Guy. Junkyard Dogs satisfies on all these levels, and Craig Johnson continues to be an author that I wish everyone would read at least once.
I'm willing to bet the farm that, for many of you who do sample his writing, it will be the start of your own love affair with Absaroka County.
Helpful Score: 1
Poor Walt Longmire. It's winter. It's Wyoming. And people are being killed right and left. But he takes it all in stride. Not as much Henry in the one, he is my favorite Longmire character. But Walt is still Walt, loyal and honest to the end.
This was another excellent entry in the Longmire series by Johnson. I have been reading this series off and on ever since seeing the TV series on A&E and Netflix. I was sorry to see the series finally end on TV but the books to me are even better. I have been reading these in no particular order (I probably should have started at the beginning) but have still enjoyed them all. In this one, Walt is spending a very cold winter in Durant, Wyoming, when he is called to find a septuagenarian tied to the back of 1968 Oldsmobile Toronado. Turns out he was on the roof of his house and anchored to the car when it was accidentally driven off by his granddaughter-in-law. He is also the owner of a notorious junkyard at the edge of town that a multi-million-dollar developer is trying to get rid of. The junkyard is also guarded by a couple of wolf dogs that play a key role in this rather different story in the Longmire saga. When the grandfather ends up dead of less than natural causes, Longmire and his deputies get involved which leads to more corpses and a large-scale marijuana operation. But who is financing this and why are people getting killed? In the mean time, Walt's body is getting more and more decrepit--his eyesight is failing and some wolf bites add to his miseries.
This, as usual, was a very engaging and entertaining entry in the series. It was more humorous than some of the previous books I have read and it kept the reader guessing until the end. I really enjoyed it and will be looking forward to reading the books I have missed.
This, as usual, was a very engaging and entertaining entry in the series. It was more humorous than some of the previous books I have read and it kept the reader guessing until the end. I really enjoyed it and will be looking forward to reading the books I have missed.
Andrew K. (kuligowskiandrewt) -
I've been reading (or in some cases, listening to the Audio CD version where George Guidell reads to me) Craig Johnson's Longmire series in order. So far, Junkyard Dogs has been the most fun of all the books in this series. Much as Dana Stabenow did with Breakup, the author realizes that a serious series sometimes needs a lighter touch as a change of pace and Craig certainly did that with this book.
We have a family who has run a local junkyard for years. Developers are trying to convince local zoning to change the rules and force them out. The owners are resistant they've moved once before, and in both cases, they were there first! (Oh, and might there be ANOTHER reason or two why the family doesn't want to leave their current location? And might there be closer ties to the junkyard family and the developers than is apparent at first glance?)
Not going to say too much just going to pat author Craig Johnson on the back, offer to buy him a Ranier Beer, pass on my highest recommendations to the next potential reader, and move on to the next book.
RATING: 5 stars.
We have a family who has run a local junkyard for years. Developers are trying to convince local zoning to change the rules and force them out. The owners are resistant they've moved once before, and in both cases, they were there first! (Oh, and might there be ANOTHER reason or two why the family doesn't want to leave their current location? And might there be closer ties to the junkyard family and the developers than is apparent at first glance?)
Not going to say too much just going to pat author Craig Johnson on the back, offer to buy him a Ranier Beer, pass on my highest recommendations to the next potential reader, and move on to the next book.
RATING: 5 stars.
As always, Craig Johnson brings you to the brink of understanding then spins you in another direction. Well written story of the characters you have come to enjoy. Walt and his crew are "real" in the sense that you can feel their pain, their loss and their thoughts.
My husband enjoyed this one immensely, according to the laughter I was a party to when we were reading together in bed at night. He would disrupt my reading with his laughter, tells me he really enjoyed this book.
Sixth in the Walt Longmire series. The opening scene is almost slapstick funny. This book has a lot lighter tone than some of the others, a nice change of pace. Johnson sure has a way of describing the cold and wind of Absaroka County, Wyoming. When I'm tired of the summer here near Phoenix, AZ, I can read one of these and remember how much I hate being cold.
Couldn't finish. Story was confusing. Not worth the time.
Craig Johnson is the best mystery writer around, and this one was his funniest!
I like the way he writes and the setting of Longmire. I just have trouble with a supposedly ethical sherriff who never cheated on his wife, having an affair with a subordinate and one who is 20 years younger, and that none of his office staff have any problems with that.
