It’s been a while since my reading took me to Wyoming. I have two series set there that I’m following and I’ve been neglecting both of them. So, this week, I’ll be visiting with Walt Longmire and Joe Pickett, two men who work in law enforcement in Wyoming, one as a sheriff and one as a game warden, but who otherwise have nothing much in common beyond a tendency to intransigence and an exceptional ability to attract trouble.

On the whole, I prefer Longmire to Pickett but I find Pickett easier to believe in (maybe that’s just a manifestation of my pessimism and misanthropy).

Anyway, I’m looking forward to spending a little time in a place I once visited and which surprised me with its beauty.

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‘Dry Bones‘ – Walt Longmire #11 by Craig Johnson (2015)

It’s been a year since I read the tenth Longmire book, ‘Any Other Name’. I enjoyed it. It was a good mystery, filled with colourful characters. I left a gap because I was becoming a little impatient with Walt Longmire’s obligatory mystic moments where he communes with the spirits of the dead. Walt takes these visits very seriously. My attitude is closer to that of his Under Sheriff, Victoria Moretti, which is to suggest that he gets himself a scan to look for tumours or other brain damage.

I know that there is at least some of that in ‘Dry Bones’ but I’m hoping it will be rescued by the ensemble cast and by the fact that the whole mystery is about a conflict over the ownership of the skeleton of a T. Rex. I can see that as a catalyst that Craig Johnson can use to get all kinds of people into all kinds of trouble, a lot of it absurd and almost all of it violent.

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‘In Plain Sight‘ – Joe Pickett #6 by C. J. Box (2011)

It’s been almost four years since I read the fifth Joe Pickett book, ‘Out Of Range’. The plot was clever and original but I found myself not liking Joe. He was in Jackson Hole, estranged from his wife and flirting with adultery. It seemed to me that he was corrosively dishonest about what he wanted.

‘In Plain Sight’ takes him back to Saddlestring and his family. Let’s see if I like him any better there.

I’m hoping for a strong plot and a version of Joe Pickett that encourages me to read the next book.