Western Mysteries
The trans-Mississippi West seems a great stage for mysteries. The urban East has its turf, especially New York City (and Spenser’s Boston, I hasten to add), and the West Coast has its mean streets, especially in Los Angeles. Florida and New Orleans can make good claims. But the big West, where scale is almost unimaginable compared to the size of a bullet, is an interesting and evocative place for the unknown and the human agent to make it known.
If you wanted to track a lineage for Western Mysteries, you could go back to Robert Montgomery Bird’s Nick of the Woods (1837) or Mark Twain’s Puddn’head Wilson (1894) or others soon to follow by Zane Grey and the explosion of “westerns” in the early 20th Century. For this page, however, in its launch, we will stick the most popular writers for Whistlestop in this category. Check back for more thought and more additions.
Spirit of Steamboat [A Longmire Christmas Novella]
Spirit of Steamboat [A Longmire Christmas Novella]
A Christmas novella for fans of the hit drama series LONGMIRE now on Netflix and the New York Times–bestselling series.
Craig Johnson’s new novel, The Western Star, will be available from Viking in Fall 2017.
Sheriff Walt Longmire is in his office reading A Christmas Carol when he is interrupted by a ghost of Christmas past: a young woman with a hairline scar and more than a few questions about his predecessor, Lucian Connally. With his daughter Cady and undersherrif Moretti otherwise engaged, Walt’s on his own this Christmas Eve, so he agrees to help her.
At the Durant Home for Assisted Living, Lucian is several tumblers into his Pappy Van Winkle’s and swears he’s never clapped eyes on the woman before. Disappointed, she whispers “Steamboat” and begins a story that takes them all back to Christmas Eve 1988—a story that will thrill and delight the bestselling series’ devoted fans.