Dry BonesDry Bones

by Craig Johnson
Series: Walt Longmire, #11
Hardcover, 306 pg.
Viking, 2015

Read: December 5, 2015
So, possibly the largest Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton ever discovered is found in Wyoming (which is apparently a pretty good place to find them, who knew?), and there’s a battle brewing over who it (and the very large price tag that’ll surely be attached to it) belongs to. There’s enough drama there, but you don’t pick up a Walt Longmire novel for paleontological wrangling, you need a dead body or two. Thankfully, one shows up not too far away, and Walt’s old friend, Omar finds it.

Johnson’s pretty good at keeping several plates spinning, but this time he seems to have outdone himself — we’ve got a controversy over who gets custody over the T. Rex, with three different parties; a runaway; dealing with FBI and a Deputy U. S. Attorney looking to make a name for himself; Double Tough’s recovery from A Serpent’s Tooth; Vic’s continuing recovery from the same book; a visit from Cady and her daughter; oh, yeah, and the murder. About halfway through I actually stopped and wrote them all down, and asked myself “how’s he pulling this off?” I’m honestly not sure, but he did.

Which does mean he pulled it off flawlessly. It didn’t take too long to figure out where the Deputy Attorney story was going — aside from the running source of comedy. But honestly, I think we needed a couple more scenes to make it worthwhile. We got to see Lolo again — which was nice, but she didn’t get enough to do. Still, just glad to see she’s still in this world. I do think the skeleton controversy vanished a bit (understandably) in the middle, when I think it could’ve kept going.

But overall, this was a fun, quick ride, with Johnson (and Longmire) firing on all cylinders, and I can’t wait for the next one to see how the events of this book impact our friends going forward.

Oh no! I’m all caught up (other than the short story collection) with the Longmire books — whatever shall I do? Actually that’s a really good question, I’m going to miss my monthly visits to Absaroka County.

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4 Stars