The Cold Dish

Walt Longmire has spent twenty-five years as sheriff of Absaroka County, Wyoming, a fictional county, and he expects to coast through his last stretch in office. Then Cody Pritchard turns up dead from a gunshot, close to the Northern Cheyenne Reservation.

Two years before, Pritchard was among four local teenagers who got only suspended sentences for raping a Cheyenne girl. The reservation's community felt that punishment came nowhere near justice, and the killing looks like an answer to it.

The weapon appears to be a vintage Sharps .45-70 rifle, and someone seems to be working down the list of offenders. Longmire has to keep the three remaining young men alive. He also has to face how far grief and anger can push people to take justice into their own hands.

His lifelong friend Henry Standing Bear and his deputy, Victoria "Vic" Moretti, help him. The supporting characters are drawn with a mix of humor and sadness.

The first book in the Walt Longmire series, it moves at a deliberate pace across the high plains and small-town Wyoming, with the focus on character. Whether Longmire can stop the shooter before the next name is crossed off drives the book.