(2011) Longmire is drawn into the search for an escaped convict up into the mountains during a blizzard. Becomes a monologue with very few characters except Walt, a ghost of the slain boy's father and his prey, Shade. Draws heavily from Dante's Inferno which is an integral part of the story. In the end Walt slays Shade with an Indian lance that he gets from the ghost(?) and barely survives. No one believes him when he recounts his experience, but he knows(?) he was right. Pretty good but a lot different from the other Longmire books. Did miss the other characters that usually inhabit his world though.KIRKUS REVIEWFor Wyoming Sheriff Walt Longmire (Junkyard Dogs, 2010, etc.), the pursuit of a vicious murderer through a killer ice storm in the Bighorn Mountains adds up to a cold day in hell.Sly, elusive Raynaud Shade is a homicidal maniac and a lawman's nightmare. But at last he's been caught. The confessed slayer of a 7-year-old boy is on his way to the slammer, almost certainly for the rest of his bloodthirsty life. And he knows it. So Absaroka County Sheriff Longmire, who has him in his custody, is quite reasonably uneasy. Not only is Shade a textbook psychopath, profoundly remorseless, he's begun professing an affinity for Sheriff Walt, as if they were somehow partners in delusion, as if Walt, too, were ?possessed by evil spirits? that forced him to kill on command. All of which is as unsettling to Walt as it is unavoidable, since the body of Owen White Buffalo, the dead boy in question, was discovered in Walt's jurisdiction. The transport van advances circumspectly toward its destination until, in the mind-blowing ferocity of a sudden mountain storm, the slippery Shade manages to escape. Now a complex game's afoot as lawman chases madman. Before it's played out, the Bighorns, icily nonjudgmental, will have had their way with Walt, narrowing the sanity gap.Deft as always, but dearly missed from this stark, wintry tale is grizzled Walt's much younger lover, his feisty, tormenting, adorable girl of summer.Pub Date: June 6th, 2011ISBN: 978-0-670-02277-9Page count: 320ppPublisher: VikingReview Posted Online: May 4th, 2011Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15th, 2011

3.5. This one felt short and it's a dreamy, mysterious one where Walt spends a night alone on a mountain, in a blizzard, chasing a bad guy. He hallucinates but he doesn't know it and the reader is left trying to decipher what was real from what was imagined.

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While I still enjoyed it I will say this was my least favorite Longmire book. ( )

"Hell is empty, and all the devils are here." p.81 ( )

A steady driving book w good descriptions of struggling up a mountain through snow and storms. A few places obvious, campy, and poorly described but the ending was tight and not dragged out. Thoughtful and not overly emotional which it could have been. It gave me pause and brought on thoughts of past adventures and ones ultimate demise. (Which is not unhealthy). ( )