By the time I got to an on-horseback confrontation between Walt and the main suspect, I was beginning to lose patience. It let Walt leverage his background and it linked neatly to Philadelphia’s historic statues but as it went on it began to feel like a stretch. I missed the other characters and found myself less sympathetic to Walt in his, mostly self-imposed, isolation. The first two books have a more ensemble feel to them. What I didn’t enjoy so much was seeing Walt so relatively isolated. The introduction of the Morretti family did a lot to explain Vic’s outspoken behaviour and her confidence. It was interesting to see more of Katie’s life and better to understand Walt’s relationship with her. Seeing Walt applying his “track the prey and stalk them stealthily” approach to detection in the context of a big city where he does not know everybody was good fun, as was watching Henry compensate for some of his friend’s abrasiveness while still backing him up. Walt is visiting his lawyer daughter, Katie and her new fiancé and has reluctantly agreed to visit with Vics Morretti’s family, a dominant presence in the PPD, who have insisted on meeting him.įrom these fish-out-of-water beginnings, we’re launched into a mystery that involves multiple murders, puts Katie in the hospital and makes Walt first chief suspect and later reluctantly accepted consultant to two PPD Homicide Detectives. Walt is accompanying Henry Standing Bear to Philadelphia where Henry will exhibit the Mennonite Pictures of the Cheyenne that he has unearthed. The third Walt Longmire mystery was a bit of a departure from its predecessors and I found the results rather mixed.

Kindness goes unpunished