Saturday, October 29, 2016

The Highwayman by Craig Johnson

The Highwayman
by Craig Johnson
 This novella is part of the Sheriff Walt Longmire series, and is inspired by “The Signal-Man,” an 1866 ghost story by Charles Dickens. A patrol officer claims to hear a radio call nearly every evening during specific hours from an Arapaho patrolman who died in a fiery crash on that stretch of road fifty years earlier.
I expected a straight-forward, updated retelling of a ghost warning travelers of danger. Oh so wrong. Johnson is such a rich storyteller and adds so much layering to his tales that this story went in directions and possessed depth that I hadn’t anticipated for a tale of this length.

Being a novella, I would call it #12.5 in the series – in between #12 “Dry Bones” and #13 “An Obvious Fact.” One doesn’t need to have read the previous Longmire books, nor have watched the A&E or Netflix series to follow the events or the characters, and of the series regulars only Longmire’s best friend, Henry Standing Bear, makes an appearance. This is simply a well-written ghost story and mystery with well-developed characters.

[If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try the rest of the Walt Longmire series by Craig Johnson, or the TV series based on those novels.] [ official Craig Johnson web site ]

Recommended by Charlotte K.
Bennett Martin Public Library

Have you read this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?

New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewers recommendations!

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