Finders, keepers.

It was the law of playground and classroom and may still apply today: if it’s lost and you find it, it’s yours. Not that that’s always fair, mind you, but generally speaking, he who loses something, loses out. They say finders, keepers; losers, weepers unless, as in the new novel ‘The Longmire Defense” by Craig Johnson, what you find is a murder weapon.

Absaroka County Sheriff Walt Longmire probably would have been content to sit around his cabin all summer with a book resting on his belly, listening to birds and watching leaves blow. That would’ve been nice, but Longmire’s daughter, Cady, had other ideas, as did his partner in law enforcement and in the bedroom, Victoria Moretti.

Cady was interested in learning about her great-grandfather. Vic needed help finding a lost hiker from Minnesota. Longmire chose Vic, and headed into the Wyoming wilderness; he didn’t want to talk about his grandfather because he had nothing good to say about the man.

Lloyd Longmire had been a bully, plain and simple. The sheriff remembered his own father telling a story about someone who was killed more than 70 years ago while hunting, and it didn’t frame Lloyd in a good light. Neither did the unique gun the sheriff found, an antique firearm from which a line could clearly and directly be drawn, implicating Lloyd Longmire of cold-blooded murder.

Because the statute of limitations never runs out on murder, and because this was personal, the sheriff knew he needed to know if his suspicions were correct. His grandfather’s rambling ranch house held nothing but ghosts and unpleasant memories. World War II-era documentation was scarce and what was available was hard to pin down. One Wyoming official gave Longmire an acrynym-filled possibility to follow, but the men involved were long dead and gone.

Long dead and gone.

Which is exactly what somebody wanted to happen to Sheriff Longmire…

Summer’s over and it seems like your schedule is packed tight again. That’s when you want a rangy novel that’s layered but not too complicated. You want “The Longmire Defense.”

Inside this western mystery, author Craig Johnson invites readers straddle an era, leaving one foot in today’s world and the other in a place decades ago, when there was no real technology and thus, no real chance of getting caught committing certain crimes. Johnson keeps readers’ feet planted in both spots as his main character — who is as perfectly, wonderfully familiar as a flannel shirt and just as pleasant — figures out whodunit.

In that, readers can rest assured that they’ll find here the usual kinds of twists and turns they expect in a story like this, but with easy humor, plenty of action, and no profanity. Indeed, Wyoming sheriff plus feisty, no-nonsense woman plus gentle old dog named Dog equals a book you’ll be happy you’ve read.

This is purely the kind of novel you want when you want something comfortable and right. Find “The Longmire Defense” and let it keep you up all night.

“The Longmire Defense” by Craig Johnson
c.2023, Viking
$29.00
368 pages