The Western Star
Walt is enjoying a celebratory beer after a weapons certification at the Wyoming Law Enforcement Academy when a younger sheriff confronts him with a photograph of twenty-five armed men standing in front of a Challenger steam locomotive. It takes him back to when, fresh from the battlefields of Vietnam, then-deputy Walt accompanied his mentor Lucian to the annual Wyoming Sheriff's Association junket held on the excursion train known as the Western Star, which ran the length of Wyoming from Cheyenne to Evanston and back. Armed with his trusty Colt .45 and a paperback of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express, the young Walt was ill-prepared for the machinations of twenty-four veteran sheriffs, let alone the cavalcade of curious characters that accompanied them.
The photograph—along with an upcoming parole hearing for one of the most dangerous men Walt has encountered in a lifetime of law enforcement—hurtles the sheriff into a head-on collision of past and present, placing him and everyone he cares about squarely on the tracks of runaway revenge.
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Craig Johnson
In the wind-cut high plains of Wyoming, justice doesn’t come with a badge and a booming voice—it comes with quiet conviction, a deep sense of place, and a stubborn refusal to look away. That’s where Craig Johnson sets his stories, and it’s where his voice has found a lasting home. Best known for the Longmire series, Johnson has carved out a distinct space in modern Western crime fiction—not with flashy gimmicks, but with layered characters, stark landscapes, and a kind of storytelling that lets silence speak as loudly as gunfire.
Walt Longmire Mysteries
Out where the wind carves stories into canyon walls and justice isn't always clean-cut, one sheriff walks the line between duty and doubt. The Walt Longmire Mysteries are steeped in the raw, unforgiving beauty of Wyoming’s Absaroka County—a place where the past lingers like smoke and every silence feels like it’s holding its breath.
Walt Longmire Mysteries consists of twenty-one primary books, and includes six additional books that complement the series but are not considered mandatory reads and series is set to expand with the upcoming release of two more books. The current recommended reading order for the series is provided below.
