A 20-plus year literary journey for Western author Craig Johnson has yielded 20 Longmire novels and counting. Here’s our guide to all of them.
Craig Johnson's Longmire book series has enthralled readers for going on 20 years. Johnson's gruff yet witty Sheriff Walt Longmire of fictional Absaroka County, Wyoming, is the kind of everyman hero readers connect with, and that has been the key to the 20-plus books that have expanded on the world of Longmire. Along with the forthcoming Tooth and Claw set to be released November 19, 2024, we've got the low down on every Longmire book.
Every Craig Johnson Book, Every Crime
Even when the climax of the story doesn't turn out the way you expected, Longmire author Craig Johnson never fails in making every Longmire novel a thrilling ride. Along with the crimes and the whodunits, Johnson's colorful cast of characters like Deputy Sheriffs Vic Moretti and The Ferg, Walt's best friend Henry Standing Bear, and even Dog, help weave tales that both feel true-to-reality yet set in some far off place that we can never quite touch just enough to keep us coming back next time. Below you'll find a summary of every novel (without too much to give it all away), along with supporting characters who stand out and whether or not the book was adapted into an episode of the Longmire TV series.
THE COLD DISH (2004)
A debut that reads like it was written by an experienced hand. While still in mourning from the loss of his wife, Martha, Sheriff Walt Longmire discovers someone is attempting to pick off a group of boys who Walt brought in for raping a teen Cheyenne girl, suffering from fetal alcohol syndrome, and got a slap on the wrists. Introduces you to most of the supporting players of Henry Standing Bear, Deputy Victoria Moretti, dispatcher Ruby, Omar, and Busy Bee Café proprietor Dorothy. Also, Walt meets up with his trusty canine companion, Dog.
HE’S A CHARACTER: It’s a tough call, everybody pops. I’ll go with HENRY STANDING BEAR, member of the Cheyenne Nation. His humor, capability, and loyalty to his lifelong friend Walt are necessary. He even calls out the sheriff when necessary. He deals with Walt, the way Tonto wished he could with The Lone Ranger.
TV EPISODE: Yes, but with a different outcome of who did it.
DEATH WITHOUT COMPANY (2006)
When Lucian Connally asks Walt to look into the death of a Mari Baroja, an elderly Basque woman who died of what is believed to be natural causes at Durant Home For Assisted Living, he uncovers a dark history tied to the her, a ranching family turned meth miners, and the senior former sheriff himself. This is the first time Craig looks into Wyoming’s Basque culture both in the characters he interviews and the introduction of supporting character Deputy Saizarbitoria, aka Sancho.
HE’S A CHARACTER: The politically incorrect LUCIAN, one of my personal favorites, is given more depth as we look into his past with Walt who also discovers he still had a few things to learn from his predecessor.
TV EPISODE: No, but episodes have utilized the Basque culture.
KINDNESS GOES UNPUNISHED (2007)
Walt hits the mean streets of Philly when his daughter Cady is beaten half to death and becomes a murder suspect when abusive her boyfriend is found hung from The Ben Franklin Bridge. With the help of Vic’s family in law enforcement he finds the killer who is connected to a drug organization and a “white Indian”. The climax involves an exciting chase on horseback through the city that shows off the author’s action chops.
SHE’S A CHARACTER: LENA MORRETTI, the mother of Walt’s undersheriff who develops an interesting relationship with him. The rest of the Moretti family is a close second.
TV EPISODE: No. Cady stays in Wyoming in the show.
ANOTHER MAN’S MOCCASINS (2008)
A personal favorite and the first time Craig implements two mysteries from two different times in a book when Walt is called to a body dump along the highway of a Vietnamese girl. A photo of Walt in his marine days sitting next to a prostitute in a Saigon bar both thickens the plot and gives us another one that looks into Walt’s first murder investigation as a CID officer in Vietnam. The book is one of his most emotional as it looks at human trafficking and the ghosts of that war.
HE’S A CHARACTER: VIRGIL WHITE BUFFALO, a homeless Crow Indian vet who is the main suspect, who’s tragic life presents a flip side of Walt and Henry’s of when they got out of the service. He becomes a recurring character in interesting ways throughout the series.
TV EPISODE: No. TV Walt and Henry are too young to have served in Vietnam. Craig did suggest to the show they could have served in Beirut during the eighties and survived the infamous marine barracks bombing.
THE DARK HORSE (2009)
The first time Walt operates outside his jurisdiction. Walt is housing Mary Basard, who confessed to killing her husband on their Powder River ranch. Walt questions her guilt, since drugs were found in her system and she is not that coherent. He travels to that rough country that remains very western, posing as an insurance adjuster to uncover the truth. It involves the witness protection program, an antique rifle, and a prize cutting horse that may not be dead as believed.
HE’S A CHARACTER: BENJAMIN The son of a young single mother waitress who allies with Walt. The kid is cute, but part outlaw.
TV EPISODE: Not really. Elements where taken for various episodes.
JUNKYARD DOGS (2010)
One of the funniest in the series. Walt looks into the murder of the local junkyard owner and gets caught between two highly dysfunctional families. Some of the funniest and outrageous episodes in this story came from actual true stories Craig experienced or heard.
SHE’S A CHARACTER: BETTY DOBBS Walt’s former teacher who had an interesting relationship with the victim, who also gives us a glimpse of Walt (or “Walter” as she refers to him) as a teenager.
I’m also partial to Travis County Sheriff Scott Montgomery who clears up a warrant issue with a suspect.
TV Episode: Sadly, no.
HELL IS EMPTY (2011)
Die Hard, Longmire style. Walt has to help the FBI escort three prisoners up in The Big Horn Mountains where ten years ago Raynaud Shade, the most dangerous of the three, buried a boy he killed. When the three escape and take an agent it’s up to Walt to track them down while surviving a snowstorm of the mountain. Some harrowing action set pieces and Craig makes you feel the cold of the mountain and the heat from the fire and explosions from the more intense moments.
HE’S A CHARACTER: SHADE, Longmire’s first truly chilling adversary.
TV EPISODE: No, I don’t think they had the budget to do this one.
AS THE CROW FLIES (2012)
The most native centric of the series. When scouting the Cheyenne reservation for Cady’s wedding, Walt and Henry, witness a Crow woman plummeting to her death and believe she was pushed. Walt becomes immersed in the Cheyenne culture and contemporary issues on the reservation. We also get a Walt Longmire peyote vision. It may help a little to have read KINDNESS GOES UNPUNISHED to understand Cady’s marriage and the Moretti clan better.
SHE’S A CHARACTER: LOLO LONG, the Cheyenne tribal chief of police, dealing with her Iraq war experience. While new to the job she grows over the investigation.
TV EPISODE: No, but the show often looks into native issues.
SERPENT’S TOOTH (2013)
This book kicks off the war with Tomas Bidarte, putting him up as a reoccurring nemesis. As Walt tries to help a young man caste out of a polygamy cult find his birth mother, he, Vic, and Henry travel the wilds of Wyoming and learning of a plot involving the oil business and a shady part of the government. As the plot becomes clearer, the story gets darker.
HE’S A CHARACTER; BIDARTE, the sharp sociopath running the operation. He becomes the Moriarty to Walt’s Sherlock.
TV EPISODE: Pieces used in various ones.
ANY OTHER NAME (2014)
Continuation of the darker tone. Walt and Lucian travel to Wyoming’s Powder River Country, looking into the apparent suicide of a fellow lawman that Lucian questions. The search for the truth takes Walt through the seamier side of the state and issues of identity are questioned with answers dangerous to discover. The most noir influenced of the books.
HE’S A CHARACTER: HADJI, a motel operator, who represents a current part of the west and who helps provide the best joke in the book.
TV EPISODE: No. Could have made a good one that fit the tone of the show.
DRY BONES (2015)
Another Johnson tone shift. Walt gets involved in a murder case that pulls him into the politics and big business of a complete dinosaur fossil discovered in Absoroka County, putting the town in an uproar. He also gets a phone call that brings Bidarte back in his life. Craig deftly plays the different shades of the stories as he weaves them together. Must have read SERPENT’S TOOTH to understand what is fully going on.
SHE’S A CHARACTER: DOROTHY is useful reporter and gage for the town concerning the dino-controversary.
TV EPISODE: Surprisingly not.
AN OBVIOUS FACT (2016)
Challenges JUNKYARD DOGS as the funniest. Walt, Henry and Vic find themselves at a biker rally in a small town where a young man, who may be Henry’s son is put into a coma after he is run off the road. As the three examine the circumstances, involving Henry’s much talked about ex, Lola, they get into a few chases and gunfights while exchanging a lot of banter. This book feels like a vacation from the reoccurring Bidarte storyline.
HE’S A CHARACTER: HENRY is on full throttle. He opens the book, mocking some tourists, does a lot of cool stuff, gets some of his past revealed, and questions Walt’s investigative technique as he reads from Leslie Klinger’s annotated Sherlock Holms.
TV EPISODE; Another missed opportunity.
THE WESTERN STAR (2017)
Another dual Walt’s past and present with the two mysteries dovetailing into the next book, DEPTH OF WINTER. Walt goes down to Cheyenne to stop a prison inmate from receiving compassionate release. It triggers an early investigation when he was a deputy and Lucian took him to a Wyoming Sheriff’s Association meeting on board the old locomotive, The Western Star. After pulling out, one sheriff is killed and another goes missing. Craig makes a nod to Agatha Christie’s Murder On The Orient Express.
SHE’S A CHARACTER: Craig uses a rare real life, though never named, character when he catches a rock band’s bus to get back on the train and the female vocalist offers him the road not taken.
TV EPISODE: No
DEPTH OF WINTER (2018)
Craig channels Sam Peckinpah as Walt goes down to cartel-controlled Mexico to rescue his daughter and face off with Tomas Bidarte for one last time. The highest body count in any of the books. Need to read SERPENT’S TOOTH, DRY BONES, and THE WESTERN STAR to completely comprehend.
THEY ARE CHARACTERS: The entire crew of locals that get Walt across the border and into Bidarte’s compound. They resemble The Island Of Misfit Toys more than The Magnificent Seven, providing the book’s much needed humor.
TV EPISODE: NO. The squib and pyrotechnics budget would have been a whole season.
LAND OF WOLVES (2019)
Walt is healing from both the physical and psychological wounds from DEPTH OF WINTER as he looks into the murder of a shepherd with a history of foreign politics. As he also has to deal with a wolf being blamed for the death of a number of sheep. It helps to read the Bidarte books, particularly DEPTH OF WINTER to understand what Walt is going through.
HE’S A CHARACTER: DOG gets some of his best moments ever and connects Walt and us to the wolf.
TV EPISODE: NO
THE NEXT TO LAST STAND (2020)
One of the most entertaining. Walt gets involved in a mystery involving the possible existence of the famed painting of Custer’s Last Stand, popularized by the copies made by Anhieser Busch, believed to have been lost in a fire. Craig has fun with western history as Walt deals with colorful foreign criminals, the art world, and wearing a tux.
HE’S A CHARACTER: HENRY delivers many interesting points of view on Custer and The Little Big Horn much to Walt’s chagrin.
TV EPISODE: Partially used for one.
DAUGHTER OF THE MORNING STAR (2021)
Walt and Henry go to the rez to help out Lolo’s niece Jayla “Long Shot” Long, a star on the high school basketball team who is receiving threatening letters, possibly tied to her sister, another b-ball phenom who disappeared a year ago. The book examines the plight of native women, but also allows Craig to show off his skill with writing sports when Walt has to coach Jayla’s team.
SHE’S A CHARACTER: JAYLA is a strong young female dealing with getting out from under the history of her broken family as she embraces her culture.
TV EPISODE: NO
HELL, AND BACK (2022)
Craig puts Walt in The Twilight Zone as wakes up in a town in the past, where everyone he encounters he knows is dead and he is not sure he is. Meanwhile, Vic and Henry search for a missing and possibly dying Walt. To save himself, he must solve a mystery involving the infamous Indian boarding schools in the region’s history. There are allusions to many of the previous books in the series, so this is not a good one to start with, but you will pick up on a lot of details if you’re a well-read fan.
HE’S A CHARACTER: VIRGIL WHITE BUFFALO returns as a spirit guide.
TV EPISODE: No, but it would be a trippy one.
THE LONGMIRE DEFENSE (2023)
Walt stumbles upon the possible murder weapon on a decades old murder where the culprit could be his grandfather. The cold case grows hot as he uncovers a secret multi-million-dollar state fund and the lives of those he’s questioned on the line. The climax contains one of the best shoot-outs in the series.
HE’S A CHARCTER: MAX SIDAROV, an ex-Russian agent, both gregarious and chilling, working with the bad guys. He introduces himself to Walt in one of the tensest scenes Craig has written.
TV EPISODE: No.
FIRST FROST (2024)
The furthest we’ve gone back in to Walt’s past. As Walt deals with the politics of a hearing on the shooting in THE LONGMIRE DEFENSE, he tells Vic a story of when he and Henry went on a road trip before they got inducted into the service and broke down in Arizona off Route 66. They end up stranded in a strange town where they don’t like strangers and those in power will do anything to keep the secrets tied to the Japanese internment camp that existed during WW2. Craig uses mood and tension like a master craftsman.
HE’S A CHARACTER: Mike Tanaka a quippy San Francisco private detective in a cool Corvette, looking into what happened to an army buddy who disappeared. He deserves a swinging sixties spinoff.
TV EPISODE: No. Trying to figure what actor would make a good young Walt. Glenn Powell?
Novellas and Short Story Collections
Along with 20 novels and counting, Craig Johnson has released a number of novellas and short story collections from Absaroka County that sought to satiate Longmire readers insatiable appetites for Absaroka County. Here they are:
SPIRIT OF STEAMBOAT (2013)
A holiday adventure yarn where Walt and Lucian get a visit from a woman on Christmas Eve that takes them back to another Christmas in 1988. A young girl became seriously injured in an accident and her only hope in getting to a hospital in a blizzard to save her life was Steamboat, an old WW2 bomber, and the old sheriff who flew one like it over Japan as a Doolittle Raider. Craig creates a harrowing story in the unfriendly skies that also finds humor and heart.
HE'S A CHARACTER: LUCIAN, who is at his funniest, cantankerous, and most admirable.
TV EPISODE: No.
WAIT FOR SIGNS (2014)
A collection of Craig’s short in roughly the first ten years of publication. It includes “Old Indian Tick” that won the first Cowboys & Indians Tony Hillerman award, his first holiday stories he gives free on Christmas to those who subscribe to his site, and “The Messenger” and “Divorce Horse” first published as e-stories. “The Messenger” proves to be worth the price alone, dealing with Walt, Henry, and Vic and an owl, a bear and a porta-potty. Introduction by Lou Diamond Phillips (aka Henry Standing Bear).
SHE AND HE ARE CHARACTERS: It’s a toss-up between the hitchhiker Walt picks up in “Unbalanced” with strong opinions on Merle Haggard of Deputy Saizarbitoria who get the spotlight when he assists the sheriff in the sheep stealing case of “Petunia, Bandit Queen of The Big Horns”.
TV EPISODES: No, Rumor has it Lou Diamond Phillips wanted “The Messenger” adapted so he could lower Katee Sackoff into a porta-potty.
THE HIGHWAYMAN (2016)
A highway patrolwoman asks Walt to help her figure out a strange case out in the Wind River area that gets little radio reception, but where they get officer assistance calls from Officer Bobby Womack who has been dead for decades. Craig has a lot of fun tapping into a classic ghost story.
HE’S A CHARACTER: For a dead man, BOBBY WOMACK is a colorful character to hear about. Of course, maybe he’s not dead.
TV EPISODE: No. However, Womack is loosely based on actor Zahn McClarnon who played Mathias.
TOOTH AND CLAW (NOVEMBER 2024)
Craig takes Walt and Henry, just out of Vietnam, and puts them above the Arctic Circle on an installation for an oil company in Alaska where Longmire is working as the head of security. Once again, Walt has bad luck with a snow storm and trapping them with his coworkers, one a killer in the midst, dealing with possible treasure, a mysterious ship from the past, and a polar bear with a bad disposition. Craig takes the modern pulp novels of Alastair MacLean and Michael Crichton and puts his own stamp on it. Damn fun!
HE’S A CHARACTER: NANERLUK THE POLAR BEAR, one of Walt’s toughest and most cunning adversaries.
TV EPISODE: No, but somebody should turn it into a movie, even if they have to change the names.
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