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Fiction. Mystery. Suspense. Thriller. The Denver Post hails Craig Johnson's Walt Longmire mystery series as a must-read. Joining the four previous novels-all of which have been Book Sense picks-The Dark Horse puts a unique Wyoming twist on the classic British village mystery. When Longmire meets a woman jailed for her husband's death, he travels outside his usual haunts to discover the truth behind this unusual murder case.Tags
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I loved this entry in the Walt Longmire series...the interactions between Longmire and a couple of horses just made the whole book sing for me. When a woman confesses to shooting her worthless mean SOB of a husband after he locked her horses in the barn and set fire to it, the Sheriff sends her to Walt's jail in the neighboring county, with a suggestion that he might not believe she really killed him but doesn't have time or resources to question an open and shut case. Naturally, Walt must rescue this damsel (who won't say a word or eat a bite, but does seem to respond to Dog) from herself. For fans of guys who wear white hats and ride black horses when they have no other choice.
So, when you're on the fifth book about an ageing sheriff in a small town in Wyoming, how do you keep things fresh?
You make him become someone else and move him to a different small town and you give him a daunting mission: to prove that the person in his cell, who confessed to murdering her husband, didn't do it.
The plot in this book takes a little more suspension of disbelief than I'm used to but it was clever, mostly plausible and had some smart twists that I didn't see coming.
But this wasn't a book I read for the plot. I sat back and let myself fall under the spell of the storytelling, the quality of the writing and the skill with which Craig Johnson makes the people and the places seem real.
The story is not told in an entirely show more linear fashion. At the start, we don't know why Walt is there or what his agenda is. We get glimpses of an earlier timeline, with Walt being Walt in his own town, dealing with a prisoner sent to him as an overflow from the Sheriff in the next County but we don't know how the stories connect. The Dark Horse idea crops up frequently usually applied in a new way and or to a new person. The plot is a puzzle which Walt doesn't yet have all the pieces for, although the part of the plot that made me raise an eyebrow was how you go undercover one county over in a town that seems to have a population of about thirty.
The writing reflects Walt's odd mix of patience and passion, logic and intuition and his dryly humorous self-awareness. It's easy on the ear yet it's tightly focused and well-executed.
The people in this story are new, apart from Walt and Henry. I liked the empathy with which the undocumented single mother, the old and almost worn out cowboy, the rancher who is selling up and shipping out and the little boy who still believes in heroes were presented. They were more than plot devices but they also brought the plot alive.I liked the feel for the semi-desert landscape, for a life spent raising horses and for living in a town that doesn't have any life any more.
That was enough for me. This may not have been the strongest Longmire book but its fed me and made me hungry for more. Book six is already on my TBR pile. show less
You make him become someone else and move him to a different small town and you give him a daunting mission: to prove that the person in his cell, who confessed to murdering her husband, didn't do it.
The plot in this book takes a little more suspension of disbelief than I'm used to but it was clever, mostly plausible and had some smart twists that I didn't see coming.
But this wasn't a book I read for the plot. I sat back and let myself fall under the spell of the storytelling, the quality of the writing and the skill with which Craig Johnson makes the people and the places seem real.
The story is not told in an entirely show more linear fashion. At the start, we don't know why Walt is there or what his agenda is. We get glimpses of an earlier timeline, with Walt being Walt in his own town, dealing with a prisoner sent to him as an overflow from the Sheriff in the next County but we don't know how the stories connect. The Dark Horse idea crops up frequently usually applied in a new way and or to a new person. The plot is a puzzle which Walt doesn't yet have all the pieces for, although the part of the plot that made me raise an eyebrow was how you go undercover one county over in a town that seems to have a population of about thirty.
The writing reflects Walt's odd mix of patience and passion, logic and intuition and his dryly humorous self-awareness. It's easy on the ear yet it's tightly focused and well-executed.
The people in this story are new, apart from Walt and Henry. I liked the empathy with which the undocumented single mother, the old and almost worn out cowboy, the rancher who is selling up and shipping out and the little boy who still believes in heroes were presented. They were more than plot devices but they also brought the plot alive.I liked the feel for the semi-desert landscape, for a life spent raising horses and for living in a town that doesn't have any life any more.
That was enough for me. This may not have been the strongest Longmire book but its fed me and made me hungry for more. Book six is already on my TBR pile. show less
I could barely follow the story due to the fact that it jumped back and forth in time. And not "back and forth" like "between the present day and thirty years ago" — back and forth between the present day and last week. I don't understand what narrative purpose that served; all it did was make it supremely difficult for me to understand what was going on. Maybe it would work if I was reading the book all in one sitting, but I read on the bus to & from work.
What makes that extra annoying is that I think this would have been my favorite of the mysteries, if I had been able to follow the plot. (No explicit rape! Badass women of color! Horses!)
The romance with Vic still creeps me out, though, and having that get ramped up in this grossed show more me out. I'm also having growing problems with the treatment of Henry's character. But damn, even when I don't like it, it's an addictive series. show less
What makes that extra annoying is that I think this would have been my favorite of the mysteries, if I had been able to follow the plot. (No explicit rape! Badass women of color! Horses!)
The romance with Vic still creeps me out, though, and having that get ramped up in this grossed show more me out. I'm also having growing problems with the treatment of Henry's character. But damn, even when I don't like it, it's an addictive series. show less
Walt Longmire, the main character of Craig Johnson's THE DARK HORSE, is very much a native of the Wyoming environs where he serves as a county Sheriff but at the same time, it is gradually revealed at a Wyoming pace that he is emerging from a place of pain and isolation. Also emerging is that the sources of his strength are also the fountainheads of his pain--family, the land and his job. The book creates a beautiful sense of place..even now a couple weeks after finishing the book I can still see the mesas and valleys and the dusty timeworn trails that join them to a degree that I can feel the grit of the land on my teeth. While the land is permanent it is not unchanging and that applies to his family as well. His parents are gone, as show more is his wife and soon his daughter is getting married. He is powerless against those changes so he runs to his job that with age has it's own uncertainties. The mystery at the center of this book would be entertaining in it's own right without all the marvelous textures applied throughout. The story revolves around the wife of a murdered rancher who admits that she killed her husband--Longmire thinks she is innocent and they might both be right. The term "dark horse" is described in the book as an outside or at least an unknown character that comes on as a surprise. This applies to Walt who is kind of lazily undercover throughout the book, but also many other characters who are not what they seem including some horses that are depicted vividly without making them cute or almost human. The real "dark horse" though is likely death, which hovers over the characters often in the form of loss. Eventually we lose everything and the trick is finding out what we need most and how to hold onto it as long as we can. That search pervades the book as well for many of the characters but especially for Longmire. Among the well drawn characters, the most fun is Longmire's Deputy Victoria...but don't call her that. She is also one of the highlights of the A&E TV series LONGMIRE based on this and other books in Johnson's series. Quite well done, the show created my interest in the books. Both are definitely worth a look. show less
The sheriff of a neighboring county asks Absaroka County, Wyoming, sheriff Walt Longmire to house a prisoner awaiting trial to relieve overcrowding in the neighboring county's jail. Mary Barsad has been accused of murdering her husband after he deliberately set their barn on fire and killed her horses. It doesn't take long for Longmire to develop doubts about the prisoner's guilt. After securing permission from the sheriff with jurisdiction in that county, Walt goes undercover to see if he can discover additional evidence that would point to someone else's guilt.
Readers learned about Walt's experience in Vietnam in the last book in the series. This book reveals more of Walt's back story since the murder occurred near Walt's childhood show more home. Walt is largely on his own while he's undercover so the regular supporting characters don't appear as frequently this time. Unfortunately, the little we get of Vic is too much. I much prefer Walt in the company of Dog, horses, and the young boy he met during this investigation. show less
Readers learned about Walt's experience in Vietnam in the last book in the series. This book reveals more of Walt's back story since the murder occurred near Walt's childhood show more home. Walt is largely on his own while he's undercover so the regular supporting characters don't appear as frequently this time. Unfortunately, the little we get of Vic is too much. I much prefer Walt in the company of Dog, horses, and the young boy he met during this investigation. show less
Walt Longmire goes undercover as an insurance investigator in a neighboring county to prove the innocence of a woman who is charged with the murder of her husband. Unfortunately, Longmire's body is punished both legally and illegally for his integrity and altruism. He's pretty much on his own for this book, with Henry Standing Bear showing up a couple of times to help, but not succeeding; he has his own problems. A half-Cheyenne kid Benjamin and Herschel, an old cowboy in love with the accused, do their best to help Longmire find the killer.
I enjoy reading about the Wyoming landscape and the characters that inhabit it. Craig Johnson's use of humor is respectful, while also poking fun at the foibles of all his characters. He writes true show more about horses (I have three), which is refreshing for one who yells at stupid horse text in some books I read. I am grateful that Dog lives. I wonder what is going on with Vic's character? She is two-dimensional, angrily sexy - which is a turnoff to Walt - and with little character development. She really is my least favorite character, although in the TV series, I like her a lot. She shows her vulnerability more there. Come on Vic, it's not all about you!
Johnson is excellent at throwing out "clues" that lead us down the wrong path, but if one pays attention, that nondescript phrase or word does light the way. I pegged the killer before the reveal because something nagged the back of my mind as it nagged Longmire's. Another satisfying read, and one that keeps me wanting more. show less
I enjoy reading about the Wyoming landscape and the characters that inhabit it. Craig Johnson's use of humor is respectful, while also poking fun at the foibles of all his characters. He writes true show more about horses (I have three), which is refreshing for one who yells at stupid horse text in some books I read. I am grateful that Dog lives. I wonder what is going on with Vic's character? She is two-dimensional, angrily sexy - which is a turnoff to Walt - and with little character development. She really is my least favorite character, although in the TV series, I like her a lot. She shows her vulnerability more there. Come on Vic, it's not all about you!
Johnson is excellent at throwing out "clues" that lead us down the wrong path, but if one pays attention, that nondescript phrase or word does light the way. I pegged the killer before the reveal because something nagged the back of my mind as it nagged Longmire's. Another satisfying read, and one that keeps me wanting more. show less
Title: The Dark Horse
Author: Craig Johnson
ISBN: 9780670020874, Viking, 2009
Genre: Police Procedural, #5 Walt Longmire mystery
Rating: A+
First Line: It was the third week of a high-plains October, and an unseasonably extended summer had baked the color from the landscape and had turned the rusted girders of the old bridge a thinned-out, tired brown.
When I began blogging last June, one of the very first authors I raved about was Craig Johnson. Get ready to listen to more raves because my opinion of him is unchanged.
In this fifth book of the series, we see the Sheriff of Absaroka County, Wyoming, working undercover as an insurance agent in the tiny, ill-tempered town of Absalom. Absalom resident Wade Barstad, well-known womanizer and show more jerk-about-town, set fire to his barn. The fire roasted alive his wife's horses, which didn't set too well with Mary. Mary Barstad waited till Wade went to bed. She then proceeded to put six bullets in his head and set fire to the house. When the fire department showed up, Mary confessed to killing her husband. But the sheriff in that county smells a rat, and he soon has Walt Longmire sniffing the very same eau de rongeur. Seeing as how most Absalom residents would just as soon shoot strangers as look at 'em, will Walt have enough time to figure out what really happened?
Although Johnson writes of his corner of Wyoming as if it's a character in and of itself, it's really the two-legged ones for whom you want to read this series. Each a rugged individualist, learning everyone's outlooks on life as well as their relationships with the other characters is the meat and potatoes of these books. The mystery is the huge wedge of lemon meringue pie that puts a satisfied PAID to the entire meal.
It's difficult to write a novel about the West and not have the landscape have its say. Just ask Hillerman or Bowen or Box...or Craig Johnson:
"I thought about how we tilled and cultivated the land, planted trees on it, fenced it, built houses on it, and did everything we could to hold off the eternity of distance-- anything to give the landscape some sort of human scale. No matter what we did to try and form the West, however, the West inevitably formed us instead."
Walt Longmire was raised by his mother to respect and help the young, the old and the infirm. He's the type of person who can stare at the wall around a pay phone and think
"People had written and scratched things so deeply that re-paintings had only heightened the sentiment. I wondered if Custer really wore Arrow shirts, if DD still loved NT, if the eleven kids that got left at the parking lot were still beating the Broncos twenty-four to three, or if 758-4331 was still a good time. I thought about the love, heartbreaks, and desperate passions that had been played out through the phone in my hand...."
No matter how he may try to dissemble, when the chips are down you want Walt Longmire guarding your back. The man who can wonder about DD and NT truly gives a damn.
The book is told in two alternating time frames: the present while Walt is undercover, and the two weeks leading to his arrival in Absalom. Although this had me chafing at the bit a few times, it did serve two purposes: reminding us why Walt thought Mary Barstad was important enough to risk his life for, and giving us doses of Walt's co-workers and friends who couldn't follow him into this investigation. This series isn't the Walt Longmire Show; the secondary characters are just as well-drawn and easy to get attached to as he is.
Although I still doubt the wisdom of having a character like Walt go undercover practically on his own home turf, I loved this book. In a nostalgic post a few days ago, I mentioned being horse crazy, which was a bit prophetic. The Dark Horse was drawing to a close. Walt had to save someone's life and the only transportation available to take him down off a high mesa and toward help was a magnificent black horse. I swear, if someone had interrupted me at that moment, I wouldn't have bothered with a gun or a baseball bat or a scream of rage. I would've let fly with one of my Spontaneous Combustion Looks-- guaranteed to flash fry the recipient down to his Tony Lamas in one-tenth of a second.
Craig Johnson turned back my clock. While my adult brain was being very well taken care of, I was also a child, sitting here with my eyes glued to the page, reading about a hero and a horse and a race against time. Not many writers are skilled enough to satisfy on so many levels. Johnson is one of the few. show less
Author: Craig Johnson
ISBN: 9780670020874, Viking, 2009
Genre: Police Procedural, #5 Walt Longmire mystery
Rating: A+
First Line: It was the third week of a high-plains October, and an unseasonably extended summer had baked the color from the landscape and had turned the rusted girders of the old bridge a thinned-out, tired brown.
When I began blogging last June, one of the very first authors I raved about was Craig Johnson. Get ready to listen to more raves because my opinion of him is unchanged.
In this fifth book of the series, we see the Sheriff of Absaroka County, Wyoming, working undercover as an insurance agent in the tiny, ill-tempered town of Absalom. Absalom resident Wade Barstad, well-known womanizer and show more jerk-about-town, set fire to his barn. The fire roasted alive his wife's horses, which didn't set too well with Mary. Mary Barstad waited till Wade went to bed. She then proceeded to put six bullets in his head and set fire to the house. When the fire department showed up, Mary confessed to killing her husband. But the sheriff in that county smells a rat, and he soon has Walt Longmire sniffing the very same eau de rongeur. Seeing as how most Absalom residents would just as soon shoot strangers as look at 'em, will Walt have enough time to figure out what really happened?
Although Johnson writes of his corner of Wyoming as if it's a character in and of itself, it's really the two-legged ones for whom you want to read this series. Each a rugged individualist, learning everyone's outlooks on life as well as their relationships with the other characters is the meat and potatoes of these books. The mystery is the huge wedge of lemon meringue pie that puts a satisfied PAID to the entire meal.
It's difficult to write a novel about the West and not have the landscape have its say. Just ask Hillerman or Bowen or Box...or Craig Johnson:
"I thought about how we tilled and cultivated the land, planted trees on it, fenced it, built houses on it, and did everything we could to hold off the eternity of distance-- anything to give the landscape some sort of human scale. No matter what we did to try and form the West, however, the West inevitably formed us instead."
Walt Longmire was raised by his mother to respect and help the young, the old and the infirm. He's the type of person who can stare at the wall around a pay phone and think
"People had written and scratched things so deeply that re-paintings had only heightened the sentiment. I wondered if Custer really wore Arrow shirts, if DD still loved NT, if the eleven kids that got left at the parking lot were still beating the Broncos twenty-four to three, or if 758-4331 was still a good time. I thought about the love, heartbreaks, and desperate passions that had been played out through the phone in my hand...."
No matter how he may try to dissemble, when the chips are down you want Walt Longmire guarding your back. The man who can wonder about DD and NT truly gives a damn.
The book is told in two alternating time frames: the present while Walt is undercover, and the two weeks leading to his arrival in Absalom. Although this had me chafing at the bit a few times, it did serve two purposes: reminding us why Walt thought Mary Barstad was important enough to risk his life for, and giving us doses of Walt's co-workers and friends who couldn't follow him into this investigation. This series isn't the Walt Longmire Show; the secondary characters are just as well-drawn and easy to get attached to as he is.
Although I still doubt the wisdom of having a character like Walt go undercover practically on his own home turf, I loved this book. In a nostalgic post a few days ago, I mentioned being horse crazy, which was a bit prophetic. The Dark Horse was drawing to a close. Walt had to save someone's life and the only transportation available to take him down off a high mesa and toward help was a magnificent black horse. I swear, if someone had interrupted me at that moment, I wouldn't have bothered with a gun or a baseball bat or a scream of rage. I would've let fly with one of my Spontaneous Combustion Looks-- guaranteed to flash fry the recipient down to his Tony Lamas in one-tenth of a second.
Craig Johnson turned back my clock. While my adult brain was being very well taken care of, I was also a child, sitting here with my eyes glued to the page, reading about a hero and a horse and a race against time. Not many writers are skilled enough to satisfy on so many levels. Johnson is one of the few. show less
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Author Information
46+ Works 19,669 Members
Craig Allen Johnson was born in Huntington, West Virginia on January 16, 1961. He has a background in law enforcement and education. He is the author of the Walt Longmire Mystery series. Another Man's Moccasins won the Western Writer's of America Spur Award for best novel of 2008. The A&E TV series Longmire, which is based on his novels, started show more in 2012. Johnson' title, An Obvious Fact, the 13th book in the Walt Longmire series, became a New York Times bestseller in 2016. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Awards
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- The Dark Horse
- Original title
- The Dark Horse
- Original publication date
- 2009
- People/Characters
- Walt Longmire; Victoria "Vic" Moretti; Eric Boss; Wade Barsad; Mary Barsad; Hershel Vanskike (show all 13); Cliff Cly; Juana Balcarcel; Benjamin Balcarcel; Henry Standing Bear; Bill Nolan; Wahoo Sue (horse); Dog (Longmire's dog)
- Important places
- Absaroka County, Wyoming, USA (fictional); Campbell County, Wyoming, USA (fictional); Wyoming, USA; Absalom, Wyoming, USA
- Epigraph
- dark horse:noun
1a; a usually little known contender (as a racehorse) that makes an unexpectedly good showing
b: an entrant in a contest that is judged unlikely to succeed.
2: a person who reveals little about hi... (show all)mself or herself, esp. someone who has unexpected talents or skills - Dedication
- For Sue Fletcher,
the real "Wahoo Sue,"
and
for Juana DeLeon,
whose heritage lives on in Auda, Marlen, and Benjamin. - First words
- "It was the third week of a high-plains October, and an unseasonably extended summer had baked the color from the landscape and had turned the rusted griders of the old bridge a thinned-out tired brown."
- Quotations
- "It's important to me because I believe you're innocent and I've spent most of my life defending and protecting the innocent."
I watched Hershel and Benjamin, cowpokes separated by a good sixty years but joined in a brotherhood of horseback and by a thing we all shared, the want of a journey to a mystical place.
There was a lesson my mother had instilled in me at an early age, which had been reinforced by my experience in Vietnam and by my twenty-four years as sheriff of Absaroka County. She said that I should protect and cherish th... (show all)e young, the old, and the infirm, because at some point I would be all of these things before my own journey ended.
I remember him speaking to the horses he shod in a low and reassuring voice, explaining what he was doing to them; he said it was one of the things we owed them for their absolute, unreserved, unswerving loyalty. He said the... (show all) outside of a horse is always good for the inside of a man. - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)"That's because I never threw it."
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Epilogue:
"Dog started and made a move to fetch it, but I grabbed his collar, and we both watched as the black hat hung over the void of the Powder River, pitched to one side, and disappeared into the northbound water below." - Blurbers
- Stasio, Marilyn; Walker, Dale L; Larson, Susan
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