Viking
Published May 26, 2026
Reviewed by Julie Campbell
Pepper McKay was a horrible human being, so when he turns up dead, there is not only a plethora of suspects, but some of those suspects want to take credit for his death — at least until the real killer is caught. At the top of the list are his four sons, three legitimate and one born the “wrong side of the blanket” as they used to say.
This entry in the Longmire series is almost two stories in one: solving the murder of Pepper McKay, and that of a second death; man against man, if you will, and the other man against nature. As he has done in previous books with blizzards and deserts, Johnson brings the readers as close to the experience of an out-of-control wildfire as it is possible to get from reading a book.
The mystery is not the strongest of the series, but the wildfire…that alone is worth the price of admission.
Read Sharon Mensing’s review of the audiobook.