Any Other Name by Craig Johnson

#11 in the Longmire series.

Walt's daughter is due to give birth the first week of January and she wants her dad, Vic, and Henry Standing Bear in Philly. But former sheriff Lucian Connelly asks Walt for a favor. The former Campbell County sheriff, now doing cold case work in his semi-retirement, checked into a motel, stuck his service weapon in his mouth and pulled the trigger. Lucian says his friend wouldn't do that without some strong provocation. The guy had never broken a law or cheated on anything, ever. 

Walt's got a few days cushion before his flight so he and Lucian head east, but are told by the locals that it's a black and white conclusion - suicide. His wife doesn't believe it any more than does Lucian. Best place to start is the cases he was working on. 

A Basque woman had disappeared and her sister was doing her best to keep the case on everyone's mind by posting missing person posters all over town. Shouldn't matter that she worked at as an 'exotic dancer.' The case file seems a bit thin for an investigator as seasoned as Lucian's friend. He was also looking into the disappearance of two other women. All vanished within 6 months of the suicide. Without a trace. Here one day. Gone the next. No clues. No warning. 

Walt sticks his nose into the operation of the strip joint, the local K-mart, post office, city police, relatives of the missing . . . due diligence. They all just vanished. But he must've pissed someone off because when he checks back in at the strip joint, the bouncer tries to bounce him but Walt manages to handcuff him to the dance pole while the club owner used a .357 to encourage the bouncer to fess up.

The bouncer says that one of the missing women is due to be taken to a remote hunting lodge deep within a national park so Walt heads out and follows the trail through knee deep snow to the lodge to confront the perps.

Well, that confrontation doesn't go all that well, but Walt does learn of a make-shift 'girls for sale' ring run from Campbell County where he returns only to have to fight off not only the bad guys but also a hundred-car coal train trying to get one more run in before a snowstorm all the while keeping an eye on the clock to the very last minute before having to catch a flight to Philadelphia.

So, did Lucian's friend commit suicide? Well, yes. But that's not important. The forensics are clear. It's the  'why' that throws Walt and Lucian for a loop. Oh yeah, and don't be surprised to learn that someone has put out a contract on Walt.

Whew. Walt can cram in a lot in a couple days. Unlike other Longmire books, our hero's main battle isn't against the forces of nature. This time it's a coal train loading up. Amazing how well Johnson brings Longmire's challenges to life - raises your heart rate he does.

It goes without saying that Johnson consistently delivers a story of warmth and tension, of camaraderie and conflict. I can't imagine anyone saying anything other than they want more. If you are convinced that the Longmire series is worthy of your commitment, I suggest starting at that the beginning as there are numerous common threads that connect and leap frog this highly readable series.

ECD

Last Days of the Condor by James Grady

Remember the Robert Redford movie in the seventies called Three Days of the Condor?  It was based on James Grady’s book, Six Days of the Condor which I remember reading in 1976 and wishing for a larger selection in this genre.  Nearly forty years later, Grady surfaces again with his Condor character in Last Days of The Condor. Condor is a silver haired, broken down ex-CIA whistle blower now living with all the physical ailments of a modern day baby boomer plus a mental struggle to sort fiction from reality.

The Condor’s civilian name is Vin.  After a heart attack and some problems with his memory, Vin is assigned to the Library of Congress to sort through books from military bases, deciding what to archive and what to pitch.  He frequently feels he is being followed and sometimes he is since a Homeland Security team is assigned to monitor him.  One day one of the Federal agents assigned to him is murdered in his Washington D.C. apartment.  Vin goes on the run with only a few dollars and a pocket full of prescription pills.  Faye Dozier, the other Homeland Security agent assigned to his keeping quickly finds him but they are attacked by unknown assailants.  She becomes suspicious of her superiors and their motives.  With nowhere to run, they impose on a fifty something woman, Merle who also works at the Library of Congress.  They invade her apartment and she surprisingly welcomes the intrusion… deja vu for Six Days of the Condor fans. Now Vin and Faye must go on the offensive to figure out who is after them and why before the assassins find them.

Last Days of the Condor is a thrilling page turner and believable Washington conspiracy tale.  Yet in many ways it is a rewrite of Six Days of the Condor, forty years later.  So I ask you, would you rather read about a young, naïve hero cleverly out smarting the intelligence community or a sixty something hero burdened with a heart condition, an enlarged prostate, and memory loss?  I’m afraid youth wins out again.

Thanks to Net Galley for the advance copy.

Spirit of Steamboat by Craig Johnson

Tuesday, the day before Christmas. Walt Longmire is mostly alone in Durant, Wyoming. Deputies on vacation. Daughter Cady is expecting and can’t travel home from Philly. So Walt does what he does most every Christmas. Re-reads Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.

A sort of ghost of Christmas past walks into his office. A young woman, with some Asian in her, has a package she wants to deliver to one Lucian Connelly, Walt’s mentor and Absaroka County sheriff before Walt. They ride over to the Durant Assisted Living facility and barge in on Lucian.

The woman has some unique features like a scar across her forehead and she sort of whistles when she talks. She asks, but neither Walt nor Lucian recognizes her. The only clue she whistles is ‘Steamboat.’

Flashback: December 24, 1988. Walt’s first year as Sheriff and a blizzard is bearing down on Colorado, Wyoming and Montana.  There has been a car wreck. The parents are dead and a 9-year old girl is severely burned. She is being air lifted to the closest airport for transport to Denver, and that’s Durant. Problem is the coming storm is too strong for all the little Piper Cub-type planes in Durant much less that 'copter.

Off in the corner of a hanger sits a relic being ‘restored’ by a runway rat. A WWII VB-25J bomber. Just like the planes that Jimmy Doolittle led on the infamous 30 seconds Over Tokyo raid. Named Steamboat. OK, they got the plane (sort of, considering it’s questionable condition). But no pilot.

Or maybe they do. Sitting in Durant’s assisted living home is Lucian Connelly, who just happened to have piloted one of those bombers on Doolittle’s raid. The EMT won’t make the trip so the town doc reluctantly volunteers. Add the girl’s grandmother, a co-pilot, and Walt for the planned 1.5hr flight to Denver trying to beat the arrival of the storm’s leading edge.

From here, Johnson takes us on the harrowing journey and all the mechanical and medical problems the team and the girl must overcome. This is Johnson’s 10^th (or 9.1 per one reviewer) Longmire story. Why 9.1? Because this started out as a short story that blew up into a novella. This little book, easily read in about 2 hours, just bristles with the tension of the flight; edge of your seat stuff.  Makes me really look forward to Johnson's most recent book (Wait For Signs) that contains 12 Longmire short stories. 

But while reading this story, one thing dawned on me about why I like this series so much. It’s not the obstacles that Longmire has to overcome. It’s his simple and overwhelming humanity. His desire to do the right thing, make the right decision, reach the righteous outcome or die trying. And you know he’ll do it. As Johnson says, Longmire’s like a loaded gun, once he's pulled the trigger, he can’t change his mind.  

Where does the title come from? 'Steamboat' is the name of the horse that was the inspiration for the Wyoming license plate. The resemblance is obvious.

East Coast Don

Gone, But Not Forgotten by Phillip Margolin

Phillip Margolin practiced law in Portland, Oregon for many years before devoting full time to writing novels in the mid 1990’s.  Many of his works including his third novel, Gone, But Not Forgotten made the New York Times Best Seller list.

In this novel, protagonist Betsy Tannenbaum is an up and coming criminal defense attorney in Portland, Oregon.  Wealthy businessman, Martin Darius walks into her office one day and gives her a healthy retainer with no indication for why he needs legal representation.  Soon after, the bodies of women who’ve been kidnapped, tortured and murdered are found on a construction site owned by Darius.  Left behind at each of the women’s homes are a black rose and a note that reads “Gone, But Not Forgotten.”   No physical evidence ties Darius to the crimes and he is released on bail.  Then information surfaces tying Darius to similar crimes in New York state ten years earlier… but he was never charged.

 

Tannenbaum is caught in a moral dilemma.  She believes everyone deserves legal representation whether guilty or innocent but she can’t bring herself to defend Darius if he truly committed these heinous acts.  Then Darius’ wife is murdered while Martin is under surveillance so he is innocent of at least that crime.  But Tannenbaum’s investigator uncovers damning information about Darius concerning the New York crimes.  Could he be guilty of the crimes a decade earlier and be innocent of the recent Portland crimes?  Could there be a copycat killer? The more Tannenbaum learns the more she is drawn to the case and the more the lives of her and her family are in jeopardy.

This is the second time I’ve read Gone, But Not Forgotten… the first nearly twenty years ago.  I’ve read several of Margolin’s novels since that time but of late find myself disappointed by comparison to his earlier books.  Re-reading Gone, But Not Forgotten reaffirms for me that Margolin’s earlier works were as good as I remembered.  Gone, But Not Forgotten has the disturbing grit of Connelly’s Concrete Blond and the startling spin of Turow’s Presumed Innocence… two of my other favorites of the nineties.

The Likeness

This is my fourth Tana French novel, The Likenss, and it is both totally implausible and totally gripping. The murder victim is Detective Cassie Maddox’s doppelganger, so under the name of Lexie Madison, Cassie infiltrates a unique group of college students at the very college where she previously did undercover work. But Lexie Madison was the fake identity Cassie and her boss had created for the prior undercover job, and sometime after that old operation ended and Cassie left the school, it was the identity that the murdered woman had chosen to steal. Do you follow that? With a bit of reality suspension by the reader, it works. Tana French’s writing and character development is wonderful although this one is not quite up to the quality of In The Woods or Faithful Place. I’m a fan, and I’ve already acquired Broken Harbor and will read that one soon.

A Serpent's Tooth by Craig Johnson

Getting on towards fall in Absaroka County, Wyoming. The local high school football team (the Durant Dogies, not Doggies) is set to retire the numbers of Walt Longmire and Henry Standing Bear. Neither is too interested.

An angel who helps out with the chores and eats the food left for him has frequented an old lady in Durant. The angel is a ‘lost boy’, a Mormon teenager named Cord who was ex-communicated for his behavior. None too bright and unaware of his family other than he is being watched over by one Orrin Porter Rockwell, The Destroying Angel and Danite, Man of God, Son of Thunder - Bodyguard to Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. That would make him over 200 years old.

Now Walt doesn’t like loose ends dangling in his county so he sets out to find Cord’s parents without upsetting the sensibilities of the Son of Thunder. Longmire soon learns that an almost nomadic tribe of the Mormon faithful, under the guidance of the massively obese Roy Lynear, has purchased a ranch barely inside Absaroka County. They have had compounds set up in Texas, Kansas, South Dakota, and now Wyoming. Heavily armed to boot. And staffed by ex-military or company types.

Why is it something as simple as a ‘lost boy’ turns into a far more complex case involving six figure drilling bits, a knife throwing Mexican Poet/drug enforcer with the all the humanity of Keyser Soze (1995’s The Usual Suspects), uneducated teenage guards with .50 caliber BFGs (use your imagination), and a local ranch wife rumored to be former CIA. And when the big showdown is imminent, the poorly-armed Walt and Henry set off to face the Lynear compound with Steadfast Resolution (is that great or what?) as their most potent weapon.

‘Nuff said. Another winner from Craig Johnson. Actually, at this point (this is my 9^th Longmire book and will be heading to the library tomorrow for #10) I might say that this one could be my favorite of the bunch so far. High praise for an outstanding series. 

My question is simple: If you have yet to join Longmire’s Posse, what are you waiting for?

East Coast Don

Insider X by Dave Buschi

It's called Facility 67096. In China. The best, brightest, fluent in both book and slang English, as well as being the most Internet savvy are recruited by the People's Liberation Army. Here, they digitally manipulate the West by producing some of the most contrived 'comments' for the social media craze. The idea being that the next war, a digital war, can begin when the West goes into an upheaval over what everyone else is thinking (via these contrived comments) inserted surreptitiously to manipulate retail sales, services, social structure, and, importantly, politics. 

These recruits are given luxury housing, high salaries, access to trendy fashion, gourmet food in exchange for 12h days making up the most outlandish stuff to insert into social media. Marks (muscle) and Lip (geek) lead a small team trying to learn more about what goes on inside this manicured compound. What they learn leads them to set up a near apocalyptic meltdown of the Facility, weakening China's impending war effort. 

I had a number of issues with this book. First, Buschi gives the reader a really long and detailed account of just what is needed to screw up the minds of the Internet-obsessed West. Second, Marks and Lip (who were sort of a mismatched Mutt and Jeff in Buschi's Proportionate Response) are little more than a sidelight to all the goings on inside the Facility. Third, this book could've been cut by well over half and inserted into some Internet Computing magazine providing a cautionary tale about how social media can be (and is) manipulated; but it probably wouldn’t have the same exposure. But seriously, do you reeeeeeeally believe all those reviews or comments (or even waste your time) at the bottom of some many websites? If anything, this book should make the reader either mad that such manipulation is going on or angry that what was essentially (to me at least) a short story turned into a droning lecture. After reading Proportionate Response (not a bad effort, but for reasons beyond my grasp, is our 3^rd most read review), I thought more Marks/Lip might be pretty entertaining. Not any more.

East Coast Don