As the Crow Flies: A Longmire Mystery

 

As the Crow Flies: A Longmire Mystery by Craig Johnson  316 pp.

This is the eighth book in the Longmire Mysteries Series. After an unpleasant encounter with the new reservation Chief of Police, Lolo Long, Sheriff Walt Longmire and his best friend Henry Standing Bear are out scouting on the rez in Montana for a location for Walt's daughter's wedding after a conflict eighty-sixed previous plans. The wedding is two weeks away. While in a remote location they witness the death of a young woman who falls from the cliff at Painted Warrior. Was she pushed or did she jump? Then Walt's dog, Dog, discovers the infant child she was apparently holding when she fell. The baby is bruised but not seriously injured. They secure the area and rush the baby to the medical center. Long arrives at the center ignoring Walt's reason for being there and immediately starts causing problems. Eventually she realizes what has happened and ends up enlisting Walt's help in solving the death even though he is out of his jurisdiction. The arrival of Walt's daughter, Cady, and her mother-in-law-to-be complicates things further. After much conflict with Chief Lolo and then the FBI agents, who arrive because the death occurred on Federal land and the arrival of Walt's daughter, Cady, and a couple more deaths, the mystery is satisfactorily solved. There is so much more in this story than just the mystery and the wedding. Walt's relationship with "the Bear" and Henry's beat up truck, "Rez Dawg", add great comic relief to what would be a mostly depressing story. And the I listened to the audiobook read by the master, George Guidall.

This Is Not the Story You Think It Is...

This Is Not the Story You Think It Is... A Season of Unlikely Happiness by Laura Munson (2010) 343 pages

After Laura Munson's husband tells her that he isn't sure he wants to be married to her anymore, and that he isn't sure that he had ever loved her, she begins her memoir as a way to cope with the uncertainty. They had been together 20 years and had two children, ages 8 and 12. She continues to live on their rural Montana property, with her husband sometimes leaving for days at a time. She tries to make excuses to the children so that they don't feel deserted by their dad. She works hard to apply the philosophy that the end of suffering happens with the end of wanting; that our happiness lies within our own control. For most of us that would be quite quite a challenge, and it is for her, too. 

She writes a compelling story, delving into her youth, her family relationships, her history with her husband, and their current situation. However, like some of the close friends that Laura confided to about the situation, I find myself sometimes wondering why she is trying so hard to be so sympathetic towards her husband, wondering how she can keep up hope that he will work through his crisis and return to stay with her.

This memoir – filled with bits of philosophy and poetry, as well as her thoughts – feels honest, sometimes raw, and was very hard to put down.

Unbreak Me

Unbreak Me by Michelle Hazen (2019) 296 pages

Andra was kidnapped and sexually assaulted five years ago while she was in college. Although she was able to go back and complete her degree, she has walled herself off from further pain and further joy. She's living in her own small house on her father's ranch in Montana, training horses. She takes a chance on hiring LJ, a Black cowboy from New Orleans. Not knowing about her past at first, he treats her like a regular person, which is a new feeling for her, since everyone else around their small community has been extra careful about how they speak and behave in her presence.

LJ likes the work, but he has concerns about being too far from his mother as she deals with health issues. At Andra's father's ranch, he's also torn between his attraction to Andra and being treated poorly by others around him, including Andra's father.

Can these two people find a way to explore the possibility of a relationship, while each feels the tug of family ties, while navigating the deep trauma of Andra's assault? It seems to be a situation made for heartbreak.

A Solitude of Wolverines

A Solitude of Wolverines by Alice Henderson, 308 pages

After a gunman interrupts the dedication of a wetland she's helped save, biologist Alex Carter jumps at the chance to leave Boston for a remote assignment tracking wolverines on a newly established wildlife preserve in northwestern Montana. But when she arrives, she finds that the locals aren't too excited about her presence and that there may be something illegal happening in the wilds of the preserve.

This is a debut thriller by a wildlife biologist and as such, the animal facts are what really shine here. In between plot twists and action sequences (some of which I had trouble believing), I learned a TON about wolverines — did you know that the dads come back after a couple of years to help train the kits on survival and hunting skills? — which made the book worth the read. Had it not been for those, and my love of animal facts, I probably would've given up on this one.

The Only Good Indians

The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones, 310 pages

Ten years after leaving his home on the Blackfeet reservation in northern Montana, Lewis has settled into his life as a postal worker in Great Falls. He has a wife, a dog, a motorcycle that he's constantly rebuilding, and a decent life. But it seems that his life on the reservation doesn't want to let him go, particularly an illegal elk hunt with his friends that still haunts Lewis. When odd things start happening, Lewis becomes convinced that the spirits he offended a decade earlier is coming back to mete out its revenge, and it's unlikely to stop at him.

This is a beautifully told story of harsh life on the reservation and in rural central Montana, interwoven with a truly disturbing horror story. Absolutely amazing.

The Blaze

The Blaze by Chad Dundas, 374 pages

Iraq War veteran Matthew Rose was invalided out after an explosion damaged his memory. So when he's forced to return to his hometown of Missoula, Montana, after his estranged father's death, Matt isn't quite sure what to expect other than plenty of awkwardness at not remembering people from his childhood. He's certainly not prepared for a potential arson that sparks a bit of a memory about another fire from his youth. Assisting his old friend, a journalist for the local newspaper, Matt begins to investigate the recent fire, as well as the one from his past, in the hopes that he can track down his own past too.

All too often, amnesia is presented as a quick-to-come, quick-to-go condition, but Dundas does an excellent job of making the memory loss and recovery seem much more real. In fact, most of this slow-burning thriller seems very real, from the motivations of the characters to the setting, which is so dead-on authentic it's amazing. It's probably not the sort of book I'd pick up on my own, but I'm glad I read it. Well worth it.

A Job You Mostly Won't Know How to Do

A Job You Mostly Won't Know How to Do by Pete Fromm, 325 pages

Taz and Marnie are young, in love, and so excited for the upcoming birth of their child. But on the day Midge is born, Marnie dies from complications in childbirth, leaving Taz alone with his grief, his shock, and his motherless child. A Job You Mostly Won't Know How to Do gives a very realistic look at the first year of Midge's life, showing Taz's daily struggles as a widower and new father. For a book that I picked up solely because of the western Montana setting and the fact that the author's name ends with an M, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this simple, touching tale.

Leader of the Pack

Leader of the Pack by David Rosenfelt (2012) 362 pages

Attorney Andy Carpenter visits convicted murderer Joey Desimone in prison, which Andy periodically does with clients whom he believes are innocent but whose cases he lost. After relating to Joey a story about how he took his dog Tara to visit a hospital patient and how well that visit went, Joey suggests Andy take Tara to visit Joey's elderly uncle Nick (who happens to have been a member of a mob run by Joey's father). Andy reluctantly does so, and the visit goes well. However, Nick says something intriguing amidst his more senile ramblings, which may indicate that he might know something that could prove Joey's innocence in two murders. By the next day, Nick is dead from an "accident." Andy doesn't believe in these kinds of coincidences and gets his team of investigators started reinvestigating the case, to see if they can get enough new information to get a retrial for Joey.

As it unfolds, the case appears to have connections to a smuggling ring run by someone with an intent to do great harm to people in both South America and the US. The murders and attempted murders pile up and the surprises are unleashed by the handful. Rosenfelt's characters are eminently likeable (well, at least the good guys are): Andy's cocky attitude but smarts and good heart, Laurie's efficiency and clever retorts, Sam's ability to get into computer systems, and Marcus's (well, that's another story)...

A suspenseful but entertaining book, like all of the other Andy Carpenter mysteries that I've read.

Bitterroot

Bitterroot by James Lee Burke, 334 pages


Billy Bob Holland is a former Texas Ranger (lawman, not baseball player), a lawyer, and has a bit of an itchy trigger finger. When he travels up to Missoula, Montana to visit an old friend, and said old friend's daughter gets sexually assaulted, he embarks on a quest for vengeance, mixing it up with all of the bad seeds in Missoula (and there do seem to be a lot of them, at least in Burke's fictional version of the easy-going college town).

I'll be completely honest: the only reason I read this book is because I grew up in the Montana valley that shares a name with this book. The characters are two-dimensional at best. The plot is pretty convoluted; a flow chart or perhaps a dramatis personae or a timeline would have helped IMMENSELY. And perhaps I'm being nitpicky, but I couldn't pin down what time of year this happened (snow AND wildflowers AND forest fires? Montana may be a magical place, but those don't all happen at the same time), nor could I gauge any sort of passage of time. Kinda wish I'd put this down before I opened it.