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steven_v 's review for:
The Cold Dish
by Craig Johnson
This is the first book in the Walt Longmire Mystery series. I picked it up because over the summer, I became a fan of the TV show that is derived from the books ("Longmire" on A&E). I already had some familiarity with a few of the characters, and figured I would enjoy it.
The book is a solid, reasonably well-written mystery. The author writes well in his descriptive passages, and most of the dialogue is good, although several times because of the way he writes, I lost track of who was saying what -- he needed to give the reader a few more hints. The characters are interesting and reasonably well drawn. And the mystery itself was a pretty good one -- he really had me guessing until the end.
One thing I liked about this book was Johnson's occasional flights of literary fancy -- every so often, maybe two or three times a chapter, there would be a wonderful, poetic line thrown in to describe a scene or an action. I found myself wishing for a little more of that, but perhaps the author thought it would get stale if he did it too much. When it happened, though, I really enjoyed it.
One thing I did not like about the book was the "visions" that Longmire repeatedly had of the spirits of dead Cheyenne elders. I know that these were meant to be taken as hallucinations and not real ghosts, but it gave the book a sort of occult/supernatural feel in those places, which I did not think fit at all with the gritty "modern western" theme that encompassed the rest of the novel. A little of the spirituality would have been fine, but I thought Johnson went overboard with it in a couple of scenes.
That said, this was a very solid first novel in the series, and I will likely read more of them in the future. The mystery itself was very good, and kept me guessing.
The book is a solid, reasonably well-written mystery. The author writes well in his descriptive passages, and most of the dialogue is good, although several times because of the way he writes, I lost track of who was saying what -- he needed to give the reader a few more hints. The characters are interesting and reasonably well drawn. And the mystery itself was a pretty good one -- he really had me guessing until the end.
One thing I liked about this book was Johnson's occasional flights of literary fancy -- every so often, maybe two or three times a chapter, there would be a wonderful, poetic line thrown in to describe a scene or an action. I found myself wishing for a little more of that, but perhaps the author thought it would get stale if he did it too much. When it happened, though, I really enjoyed it.
One thing I did not like about the book was the "visions" that Longmire repeatedly had of the spirits of dead Cheyenne elders. I know that these were meant to be taken as hallucinations and not real ghosts, but it gave the book a sort of occult/supernatural feel in those places, which I did not think fit at all with the gritty "modern western" theme that encompassed the rest of the novel. A little of the spirituality would have been fine, but I thought Johnson went overboard with it in a couple of scenes.
That said, this was a very solid first novel in the series, and I will likely read more of them in the future. The mystery itself was very good, and kept me guessing.