Review of The Dark Horse

Goodreads | Eric_W Welch (Forreston, IL)'s review of The Dark Horse:

Sheriff Walt Longmire has a money-making arrangement with neighboring counties: he provides lodging in his jail for the overflow from their jails. When Mary Barstad is brought in and he reads her file, his interest is peaked. She had confessed to shooting her husband, Wade, with .22 rifle, understandable enough given what a mean SOB he was thought to be, but to then burn down her barn with her horses in it? That didn't make sense, so with the other sheriff's blessing, Walt decide to do a little poking around.

The book's scenes converge, alternating between the present and events that took place ten days before. As the interval shortens we begin to see the outline of the puzzle begin to take shape. Normally, I don't care for this kind of structure, but Johnson pulls it off very nicely.

This is a really good book, a real page-turner and I don't use the word lightly.   I struggled a little with The Cold Dish, which I listened to as an audiobook. Normally, I like George Guidall as a reader so I don't think it was his reading that made it a slog. I read The Dark Horse in print (well, on my Kindle apps which is the only way I read anything now.)  Perhaps that made a difference? I have a couple others in audio so we shall see down the road.   Certainly, Johnson is one of the more literate writers of the genre and the relationship between Henry Standing Bear and Walt is marvelous.  It's refreshing to read about someone who can't leap tall buildings or catch bullets with one hand not to mention beat the crap out of fourteen bad guys at once all while sipping on a Dewar's.

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