Kindness Goes Unpunished, by Craig Johnson

I don’t usually read westerns, but a few weeks ago I tried the first book in Craig Johnson’s Walt Longmire mystery series. I raced through The Cold Dish, then read the second, Death Without Company, and just finished the third, Kindness Goes Unpunished. After I write this post, I’m going to start the fourth, Another Man’s Mocassins. I laugh out loud while reading these books. The mysteries are good and the humor is just the way I like it: dry.

The stories are told from the perspective of Longmire, a Vietnam vet and the long-time sheriff of fictional Absaroka County, Wyoming, “the least populated county in the least populated state in the union.” His best friend since grade school is Henry Standing Bear, from the Northern Cheyenne reservation that abuts Absaroka County, and his deputy is Vic Moretti, a transplant from South Philadelphia where her brothers, father and uncles are all cops. Longmire has a daughter, Cady, his “singular ray of sunshine,” a lawyer now living in Philadelphia.

The first two mysteries take place in Wyoming, with Cheyenne characters playing a big part of the story, and while Kindness Goes Unpunished is set in Philadelphia, the element of Native American mysticism stays strong. Longmire, Standing Bear, and Longmire’s dog, Dog, drive Standing Bear’s powder-blue 1959 Thunderbird to Philadelphia, where Standing Bear is guest of honor at an exhibit of Native American photographs at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. The sheriff is eager to see Cady and to meet her new boyfriend Devon, a lawyer at a different Philly law firm. But before father and daughter reunite, Cady is brutally attacked and almost killed. She stays in a coma for most of the book, while Longmire teams up with the Philadelphia cops to try to find the assailant. Several deaths and a drug bust occur while Longmire is in town.

There is enough fire power (including the brief appearance of a Howitzer) and fighting to satisfy those who like violence in their mysteries, but not so much that it turned me away. There’s some sex and a bit of romance. I’ve been intrigued over the course of the series by the developing relationships between Longmire and those around him. These books should appeal to women as well as men; the women’s characters are fully-developed and strong where appropriate. These are good mysteries – exciting, intriguing, funny and addictive.

Check the WRL catalog for the book Kindness Goes Unpunished