ALL PULP REVIEWS-by Ron Fortier
HELL IS EMPTY
(A Walt Longmire Mystery)
By Craig Johnson
Penguin Books
309 pages
“Hell Is Empty” is as much about the Bighorn Mountains of
Wyoming as it is about the people who live within their shadows. Absaroka County Sheriff Walt Longmire
is transporting several prisoners to an out of the way wilderness locale to
unearth the remains of a slain Indian boy murdered by one of the convicts; a
psychopath named Raynaud Shade.
Upon meeting Longmire for the first time, Shade tells him he hears
ghosts and believes the sheriff possesses the same ability. Longmire, having fulfilled his duty in
getting this human monster to the site, packs it in and starts down the
mountain.
Within hours of digging up the boy’s bones, the convicts,
following a plan devised by Shade, escape; killing several federal agents and
marshals in the process. When the
news reaches Longmire, he realizes he’s the only lawman left on the mountain
able to give chase and sets out after the killers alone. Thus begins his incredible journey that
will ultimately test both his body and his spirit as a savage winter storm is
descending on the mountains and becomes a deadly participant in the drama.
Johnson’s title; “Hell Is Empty,” is an homage to Dante’s
classic fantasy, “Inferno,” where the lowest levels of hell are not hot but
numbingly frozen over much like the very peaks Longmire must conquer to capture
Shade and save the female marshal he holds hostage. Now a
resident of Colorado, I am daily reminded of the power and majesty of these
mountain ranges and threat they pose to any who venture into them naively
without the proper outdoor skills.
This book is more an adventure odyssey than a mystery. Longmire must
confront his own inner demons while climbing higher to reach the snow blanketed
Cloud Peak which is Shade’s final destination where both will confront each
other in a primal contest of good versus evil.
The book is multilayered and despite it Heminwayesque
narrative style, Johnson adds a new twist by having his protagonist guided by a
giant Crow warrior called Virgil White Buffalo; his version Dante’s Roman poet
guide. There is a crucial connection between the giant Virgil and the fleeing
killer that Longmire slowly uncovers as the pair make their way through the
brutal storm. Soon the physical
suffering the sheriff has to endure begins playing tricks on his consciousness
until the reader realizes his companion may simply be the hallucination of a
fevered mind.
“Hell Is Empty,” is the seventh book in the Walt Longmire
series by Johnson and a terrific, gripping read unlike anything else on the
market today. It is fresh with
interesting characters and skillful in its economic storytelling. As the book’s cover announces, the
series has been turned into a new A & E television series that will soon
premier on Sunday evening June 3rd and features Australian actor
Robert Taylor as Walt Longmire with Katee Sachofff of Battlestar Galactica fame
as his chief deputy Victoria “Vic” Moretti and Lou Diamond Phillips as best
friend, Henry Standing Bear. If the show is as much fun as this book, then
we’re all in for a treat.