Book Around the Corner

Junkyard Dogs by Craig Johnson (2010) French title: Molosses. Translated by Sophie Aslanides.

I’m back in Wyoming in Absaroka county in this 6^th volume of Craig Johnson’s Longmire series.

Unfortunately, that’s where Johnson’s paperbacks started to be published by Points instead of Gallmeister and the books are not as nice as before. The cover is a cheap picture instead of an original drawing and the paper isn’t as thick. Gallmeister keeps publishing the hardbacks and manages the translation while Points has taken over the paperback ones.

I don’t know who made the decision but it’s not a good one for readers who enjoy nice paper books. I guess either I’ll get the hardback or I’ll get the ebook in English.

Back to Junkyard Dogs. It’s February and the winter in brutal. Imagine that they have electric plugs on parking meters so that you can warm your car. Let’s not complain about a little bit of snow in Western Europe, right?

This episode opens on a weird scene that only Longmire seems to get himself into:

I tried to get a straight answer from his grandson and granddaughter-in-law as to why their grandfather has been tied with a hundred feet of nylon rope to the rear bumper of the 1968 Oldsmobile Toronado.

I stared at the horn pad and rested my forehead on the rim of my steering wheel.

The old man was alright and being tended to in the EMT van behind us, but that hadn’t prevented me from lowering my face in a dramatic display of bewilderment and despair. I was tired, and I wasn’t sure if it was because of the young couple or the season.

The old man is Geo and the young couple are Duane and Gina. Geo runs the local junkyard and is at odds with his neighbor Ozzie Dobbs Junior. He bought the land adjacent to the junkyard to build a luxury housing development. The proximity of the junkyard cramps his style and for two years now, Dobbs has been trying to move the junkyard and car scrap yard from Geo’s land to other premises in the State. There’s no lost love between Geo and Dobbs, but it’s another story between Geo and Dobbs’ mother.

Then a human thumb is found in the junkyard and the sheriff opens an investigation to find out to whom it belonged. It’s an opportunity to motivate Deputy Saizarbitoria who has trouble recovering from taking a bullet in a previous investigation and from the birth of his son, who is not sleeping. A change of job sounds appealing to him at the moment but Longmire wants to keep him on the team. Hence the motivational thumb investigation.

The severed thumb mystery leads the Sheriff to another kind of crime operated on the junkyard premises.

Life is never boring when you’re sheriff in the Absaroka county.

*sigh* I never know how to write properly about crime fiction books, I’m always wary of giving away too much of the plot and spoil another reader’s fun. I was glad to spend another moment in Longmire’s company. The team at the sheriff’s office are as fun as usual and Craig Johnson never lacks of plot ideas. It’s not Pulitzer Prize material but it’s entertaining, good fun and well-written.