Craig Johnson

For Publishers Weekly, Jordan Foster interviewed Craig Johnson about The Dark Horse, his fifth contemporary mystery featuring Wyoming sheriff Walt Longmire.

Part of the Q & A:

Native American culture figures prominently in your books. What's your inspiration?

My ranch is adjacent to both the Crow and Cheyenne reservations, and I've got an awful lot of friends up there. They're an amazing people; I'm consistently humbled by how remarkable they are. There's one guy, Marcus Red Thunder, whom I use freely in assembling the character of Henry Standing Bear. He's got a sharp sense of humor. Most Indians I know have great senses of humor. Of course, looking at the treatment of Native Americans from a historical perspective, you have to laugh or you'd end up crying your eyes out.

Do you consider your books to be “westerns”?

They are in the sense that they're novels set in the American West, but ....[read on]

The previous Walt Longmire mysteries are The Cold Dish, Death Without Company, Kindness Goes Unpunished and Another Man’s Moccasins.

Read more about the novels and the author at Craig Johnson's website.

The Page 69 Test: Kindness Goes Unpunished.

My Book, The Movie: The Cold Dish.

--Marshal Zeringue