The Western Star (Walt Longmire #13)

This story starts out well..I love the juxtaposition between old and new, and learning about the train ride with the sheriffs. but then!!! OUCH OUCH OUCH. Just as the story is about to wrap up, the author throws in a ridiculous wrench…referring to a character I doubt anyone will remember….and then adding insult to injury, never finishes the story. He makes us wait until his next book. SORRY, ,Craig.! You used to write very compelling books that ended at the ending. Now you’re pumping your franchise and hoping we will wait until the next book. BAH Adding insult to injury, Vic and Henry disappear. Walt keeps hugging his grandchild and feeling stupid. This book is a terrible read. I think the television franchise is getting to you in a very bad way.

I’ve loved the Longmire series, but this one was a huge disappointment. I’m giving 3 stars rather than 2 out of respect for the previous books I’ve enjoyed so much.

Other than Walt Longmire himself, Henry Standing Bear and Deputy Vic are easily Johnson’s most interesting and entertaining characters. But in this book, Henry is only peripheral to the story and Vic was so much on the sidelines that she could have been left out completely and it wouldn’t have changed the story. The romance that had been developing between Walt and Vic has disappeared over the past couple of books, which is almost as disappointing as not getting to enjoy the ferocious Deputy Vic watching Walt’s back in times of trouble. I’m really missing her having a major role in the stories.

What we get instead is Lucien Connely, Johnson’s most contrived and uninteresting character, taking the spotlight, as he did in the ridiculous Sprit of Steamboat and a couple of other recent stories.

Finally, it appears Johnson is preparing to jump the shark with the cliffhanger ending. Please, Mr. Johnson, get Walt, Vic, and Henry back to Absaroka County and get them back into the kinds of trouble that made this series great!

This latest Longmire was a real disappointment on many levels.
The worst aspect is the cliff hanger ending which leaves me really cold. I hate it when authors or TV shows engage in this tawdry practice to get you to follow along at your expense instead of giving you a satisfying stand alone product. I won’t buy another of this series without reading a lot of reviews first to make sure he hasn’t done it again.
Leaving little loose strands for recurring characters is fine, but having a major character kidnapped toward the end and leaving that unresolved until next time is really unsat.
Aside from Walt, the two best characters in the series are Henry and Vic who play insignificant roles in this one.
The romance between Walt and Vic, another wonderful feature, was deemphasized in the last book and all but disappeared in this one.
Sometimes writers just lose the spark of what made their series a hit and just start pumping out sub standard work to keep the bucks rolling in.
Stuart Woods comes to mind here. His first several books were truly terrific. Then he fell into the Stone Barrington character and descended into almost soft core porn.
The great ones, Michael Connelly, John Sandford, Robert Crais, just manage to keep them coming with no lapse in quality, nurturing the spark.
I’m starting to worry that Nelson DeMille may have started to go the way of Woods.
And this Longmire book has me thinking Craig Johnson might be going that way as well.
Would be a pity.

I’ve read and loved all of the Walt Longmire novels. This one was SO disappointing, both in the story lines and in the lack of development of the characters. The cliffhanger was unnecessary and really made me angry. And the depiction of Martha! Superficial and in no way shows why she was the love of Walt’s life.

The back-in-the-day plot was more engaging than the flash-forward-to-present-day one, until it became obvious and preposterous. Cliffhanger in the present day? Ick. I have read all of the Longmire books and look forward to each one as it comes out. Some of them are masterful (Spirit of Steamboat!) This one feels like an outline for the first half of something that could be promising, but needs some rethinking. And has Johnson just given up on writing the character of Vic? She’s around, but flat and pointless, in this book. I guess she was kind of narratively present in the book set in Sturgis, but she has otherwise been on vacation in one sense or another for quite a while. Johnson seems to be backing off from the Walt/Vic romance/partnership, without knowing what to say about that backing off.

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