Review: A Serpent’s Tooth, Craig Johnson

Rating: 2 out of 5

I was really enjoying this book until the end, where the plagues that have riddled the previous Longmire books also get to this volume. This flaw, of course, is the stupidity of the main character which, despite countless adventures, allows the Sheriff to walk into any danger without the first thought to how a responsible law enforcement official would behave.

Once we get past that point that Walt thinks it’s acceptable to start going gun-ho on everyone again, we get a main character that doesn’t sleep, accuses people without evidence, beats people up for no reason, and is generally overbearing. Added to this is his insane “I’ll do this myself”-macho attitude which actually has the character saying that he should take care of everything himself, because backup will then find it easier to get to him. That’s plain stupid.

More and more as I read into the series, I have hoped for the Wyoming landscape to be the background of sensible small stories; crime that gets solved by the clever application of thought and reason or the necessary, though reluctant, use of force. Instead of this, we have the above… and for me, that means that it’s time to consider this the end of my friendship with Sheriff Longmire. This may be a quick and enjoyable read, but the main character makes the story unbearable.

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