WAIT FOR SIGNS
Twelve Longmire Stories
By Craig Johnson
Viking Penguin
183 pages
We reviewers are always trying to come up with fancy
descriptions that will instantly cue the reader into exactly what kind of
experience awaits them in the title we are reporting on. It’s that tight-wire routine of giving away
just enough of the idea without spoiling the actual contents. With any Craig Johnson Longmire title, that’s
not all that difficult.
Like the best fictional detective series ever put to pen,
the joy in these mysteries is always the characters themselves with the actual
who-dunnits really only an excuse to visit them time after time. And the Longmire books are no
exceptions. Rather they excel at this
process and every time a new one comes out, we can’t wait to spend more time
with Sheriff Walt, Deputy Vic, George Standing Bear and all the marvelous
characters who inhabit Johnson’s Absaroka
County, Wyoming.
Over the past years, since beginning the series, Johnson has
written a dozen short stories dealing with this series. Some are poetic epilogues to certain novels
while others are simply stand alone vignettes that do not require any real
familiarity with the books. What they
all have in common is Johnson’s grasp of humanity with all its foibles and his
unique homespun humor. Here’s the bottom
line, if Mark Twain had written mystery stories, they would have read a whole
lot like the dozen between the covers of “Wait For Sign.” That’s the best compliment this reviewer can
offer.
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