Book Summary and Reviews of The Cold Dish by Craig Johnson

Book Summary

Introducing Wyoming's Sheriff Walt Longmire in this riveting novel from New York Times bestselling author Craig Johnson—the first in the Longmire mystery series.

Fans of Ace Atkins, Nevada Barr and Robert B. Parker will love this outstanding first novel, in which Craig Johnson draws on his deep attachment to the American West to produce a literary mystery of stunning authenticity.

After twenty-five years as sheriff of Absaroka County, Walt Longmire's hopes of finishing out his tenure in peace are dashed when Cody Pritchard is found dead near the Northern Cheyenne Reservation. Two years earlier, Cody was one of four high school boys given suspended sentences for raping a local Cheyenne girl. Somebody, it would seem, is seeking vengeance, and Longmire might be the only thing standing between the three remaining boys and a Sharps .45-70 rifle.

With lifelong friend Henry Standing Bear, Deputy Victoria Moretti, and a cast of characters both tragic and humorous enough to fill in the vast emptiness of the high plains, Walt Longmire attempts to see that revenge, a dish best served cold, is never served at all.

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

1. The Cheyenne and other tribes live within the borders of the United States. However, as Craig Johnson points out in The Cold Dish, the Cheyenne also constitute a sovereign nation, and the reservation stands politically and culturally as a world apart. Characters like Henry Standing Bear and Lonnie Little Bird must mediate between two modes of life and two identities. How does Johnson address the Indian characters' problem of dual identity?
2. Johnson's book also deals with various images of the West, and a tension exists between the West of idealized myth and the West as it is experienced by those who actually live there. What instances of the interplay between the romantic West and the literal West do you observe, and what effects ...