If you like compelling gritty mysteries, try the Walt Longmire series by Craig Johnson.  These mysteries are set in Wyoming and feature sheriff Walt Longmire, his deputy Victoria Moretti, and friend Henry Standing Bear. 

Here’s how the Craig Johnson described the series in an interview with New Mystery Magazine:

“The series is about Walt Longmire, who has been the sheriff in a rural county in northern Wyoming for twenty-three years. Absaroka County is located alongside the Northern Cheyenne Reservation, where his closest and life-long friend, Henry Standing Bear, lives. Their friendship is based on a mutual trust and respect to which the society of the contemporary high plains should aspire, but to which it unfortunately doesn’t always. Because of the strength of the men’s friendship and since the books are told from Walt’s perspective in first-person present tense, there is a propensity for the narrative to be overly masculine, so Walt’s under-sheriff and chief counterbalance is Victoria Moretti, who is everything that Walt is not--female, young, urban, technologically advanced and profane. Actually, there are a lot of female characters who look after Walt, enough so that my wife calls the novels sneaky-women’s-issues books cleverly disguised as masculine-adventure mysteries. I just try and make sure they’re good and worth the price of admission. “     

Click here to read the entire interview.

Start reading with Cold Dish.

The cold dish / Craig Johnson After decades of peace between the white and Native American communities of early American Wyoming, a young man who was once convicted for raping a Cheyenne girl is found dead, prompting sheriff Walt Longmire, his deputy Victoria Moretti, and friend Henry Standing Bear to investigate.