C. J. Box
The Joe Pickett series began in 2001 with Open Season and
continues through sixteen adventures (one per year), with the latest
installment titled Off the Grid published earlier in 2016. If you’re not familiar with Box’s books, Joe
Pickett is a conservation officer covering 500 square miles of wilderness for
the State of Wyoming. He’s a family man with
a wife and three daughters who are all aware of the danger associated with a job
that often takes him to remote locations where he interacts with all kinds of
people out of reach of telephone communications. This particular adventure takes Joe to the
Red Desert in southern Wyoming with a group of possible terrorists, some
undercover government agents with agendas of their own, and an expert hunter
and falconer, Nate Romanowski, who is making a repeat appearance in the series.
Margaret Coel
The Man Who Fell from the Sky by Margaret Coel is the newest
installment of the Wind River Mysteries which began in 1995 with the
publication of The Eagle Catcher. Known
for her ability to blend history with modern issues and fast-paced action, Coel
features two unlikely sleuths, Father John O'Malley, a
history scholar and recovering alcoholic assigned to work at the mission on the
Arapaho Indian reservation, and Vicky Holden, an attorney who returned to the
reservation after ten years in the outside world. Together they tackle a murder that
involves Butch Cassidy’s buried loot from the 1890’s, the location of which has
been passed down through family lines, along with other secrets that put
everyone in danger. If Coel’s western mysteries suit your reading style,
watch the library shelves for Winter's Child, slated for release in September 2016.
John Fortunado
Dark Reservations by John
Fortunato features Joe Evers, special agent with the Bureau of Indian Affairs
in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His battle
with alcohol will remind readers of Henning Mankell’s Swedish detective, Kurt Wallander,
whose powers of deduction and years of experience on the job are often
overshadowed by his drinking habits.
Evers finds himself working on a 20 year-old cold case involving a
missing Congressman when an old car full of bullet holes shows up on the Navajo
reservation. He’s assigned to work with
Randal Bluehorse, a Navajo Tribal Officer, tying Native American and Federal
governments to the mix of mystery. Add a
Congressional candidate related to the victim and the possible theft of Native
American artifacts, and you’ve got plenty of intrigue packed into this novel,
which won the Tony Hillerman Prize in 2014.
Tony Hillerman / Anne
Hillerman
Tony Hillerman’s outstanding western mysteries date back to
1970 beginning with The Blessing Way and ending eighteen books later with The Shape Shifter in 2006. Then he died and
the fate of Lt. Joe Leaphorn was left to the writing skills of his daughter,
Anne Hillerman. Luckily, the Leaphorn
and Chee series was continued in 2013 with Spider Woman's Daughter and Rock with Wings in 2015. Except for the gap
in time, the transition is seamless from one author to the next. The primary difference in storyline is a
shift in focus from Lt. Joe Leaphorn, the original protagonist, to the newly
married crime fighting team of Navajo tribal police officers Jim Chee and
Bernadette Manuelito. As Jim and Bernie
try to balance married life with their careers in law enforcement, their latest
adventure separates them into two investigations that bring contemporary issues
to the story; in this case, film makers in Monument Valley, drug runners, and a
solar company trying to bend some laws in the New Mexico wilderness.
Craig Johnson
The Highwayman by Craig Johnson is a novella that features
Walt Longmire, but is not part of the Longmire series that begins with The Cold Dish in 2004 and continues to the eleventh book, Dry Bones (2015). New readers will be able to step into western
adventure with Longmire and his life-long friend, Henry Standing Bear, who
usually adds his Native American skills of observation and contemplation to
solve the mystery at hand. Walt and
Henry are called to a Wind River Canyon outpost to investigate intermittent “officer
needs assistance” calls in the canyons where radio transmission is spotty at
best. Rosey Wayman, newly assigned to
the post, is starting to doubt her sanity because the messages are coming from
a patrolman who died in the 1980’s. This mystery can’t be solved without looking
into the past and confronting the legend of The Highwayman. Longmire’s office staff and his daughter,
with their own side plots, are missing from this more direct storyline, but
reappear in An Obvious Fact, the next story in the series, due for publication
in September 2016. The TV series,
available in the DVD section, features three full seasons of Robert Taylor as
Walt Longmire and Lou Diamond Phillips as Henry Standing Bear..
Lynette Suckow,
Reference Desk
No comments:
Post a Comment