Nice doggy. Nice doggy.

I had a busy morning yesterday. After my morning walk, I worked from about 8:00am to 1:30pm. (Working breakfast and working lunch) Things just piled up. I read the headlines and half a dozen articles in the 18 news sources I look at each morning. Found 3 articles that I prepared for the Teaching Comparative blog with bits of commentary and excerpts. I posted 4 excerpts and a comment to the blog that people had sent me. (I aim for one posting each week day, so this was quite unusual.) Then I got carried away trying to explain why the Texas governor is either ignorant or playing to the ignorance of his audience about money and banks. I posted a bit of my outrage at Google+. (If you look at it, you'll have to scroll down to the post with the graph showing the components of the money supply, since I don't know if there's a way to link directly to the posting.)

Finally, in the early afternoon, I showered and went off to run errands. One of them was to the Northfield Library. I returned the Tana French book I'd just finished and went off in search of new things to read. But, oops, I'd forgotten to bring my "to read" list.

That meant I was reduced to looking for new books by familiar authors. Good luck. I found a new book by Craig Johnson. I've written about Another Man's Moccasins and Death Without Company. I liked them, but I'd given both of them Heart of Gold awards for improbabilities.

Well, Junkyard Dogs gets a Heart of Gold and a Green Lantern (for super heroism).

This is another "Walt Longmire Mystery." One bit in the book has the sheriff getting a physical exam during which the doc catalogs his injuries and scars (including a broken bone in one foot and a partially detached retina). After that the super hero sheriff gets banged around some more, but still comes out able to see, walk, talk, and chew gum at the same time. More than any mere mortal. Give us a break, Johnson.

The book also gets awards for improbabilities. I only noticed a couple of them while reading the book, but some biggies popped into my head as I went to sleep.

If you haven't figured it out yet, I was was so entranced with the story and the pursuit of the villains, I finished the book about 11:15pm. Less than 12 hours after checking it out. And I sort of cooked dinner in there and talked to Nancy while eating it.

Craig Johnson relies of his super hero and on improbabilities, but he spins a mean yarn. The characters are pretty one-dimensional, but he spins a mean yarn. Winter on the high plains of northern Wyoming is brutal, but Johnson spins a mean (and complex) yarn. He kept me going for a long time. Oh, did I mention that there's some good humor in the book, too? Like the opening scene where grandpa ties himself to the bumper of the car in the yard while he cleans the chimney, but his granddaughter-in-law doesn't know it and drives off. (Grandpa survives that one, and it's funny because he does.)

Do you need more recommendation from me?

Have you read Junkyard Dogs? Or another of Craig Johnson's mysteries? Write and tell this little bit of the world how you reacted.

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• Craig Johnson's web site
  
• Condorena's review at Murder by Type
  
• An interview with Craig Johnson at Art and Literature, The Literary Blog of Raleign's Metro Magazine
  
• Jen from Loraine, Ohio's review at Jen's Book Thoughts

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Chase and peep

We're lucky to have a connection to the bookstores of Chicago. Our connection pushes books she's read on to us when she's in town. We're grateful, but sometimes it's hard to keep up.

She dropped off C. J. Box's latest, Three Weeks to Say Goodbye, a couple weeks ago. I read the first couple chapters and then put it on the DONE pile. It was just too threatening, too intense, and too foreboding for me.

However, Margaret Coel's new book, Blood Memory, was in the same bag as Box's book. It's threatening, intense, and foreboding too. But I liked it.

Many years ago, I had a film teacher who said there were two kinds of films: chases and peeping Tom voyeur experiences. Blood Memory is both. It begins with a botched murder attempt by a professional hit man, and the rest of the book is the chase by the hit man to kill a threatening reporter. And, every few chapters, there is a peeping Tom observation of the hit man. It doesn't humanize him, but it does make his rationalizations apparent.

Coel has written a baker's dozen mysteries set on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. I was getting a little tired of reading about the missionary priest and the Native attorney who braved the bad guys on the rez and resolved the too-numerous, convoluted mysteries there. This book is set in Denver and includes fictional glimpses of local and state politics. It's proof that Margaret Coel can write stories about other characters set in other settings.

I recommend it. Anyone else read it? What did you think?

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• Margaret Coel's web site
  
• Norah Piehl's review at BookReporter.com
  
• Rhonda Esakov's review at Story Circle Book Reviews

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