3 Questions

Craig Johnson is the author of the Sheriff Walt Longmire mystery series, which inspired the hit TV show Longmire. He will present and sign copies of Dry Bones, his newest book in the popular series, at Collected Works this Tuesday at 6 pm.

Walt Longmire is very well read, and your work is steeped in references to both the classic literary canon and crime literature. How has your love of literature influenced your work?
I had a bit of a brainstorm when I was first putting Walt Longmire together. I wrote the first two chapters of The Cold Dish, and Walt was just not very interesting. I thought, OK, probably the people reading this have read other books. So, maybe, you should make Walt's secret weapon be that he reads. It also gave me a lot of opportunities to utilize literary references and quotes. He reads everything. It gives him a distinct advantage, because it is an underrated skill these days. He's a little bit older, and not a James Bond type, so he has to be a little bit smarter. It goes all the way to the DNA of the character. Walt's office is an old Carnegie Library that has been changed into a sheriff's office, which actually happened up here in Buffalo, Wyoming. Walt was an English major before he got drafted into Vietnam. One of the sorrows of Walt's life is that he probably would have been much happier teaching English at some little liberal arts college. But the literary thing is going to be a constant in all of Walt's developmen

Do you see Walt as an archetypal figure, or the opposite, since he easily reflects both? How has that developed his moral compass?
I knew that a Western sheriff was iconically powerful and that I was playing with fire. The temptation to make him too stereotypical, too cliche, was always going to be something I would have to deal with. When I started writing the books, all that CSI stuff was really taking off. Everything was about ballistics and forensics. I asked a Wyoming DCI investigator, "How long does it take you guys to get DNA evidence on a case?" He replied, "Is it a high-profile case? If so, about nine months. If you're in a big city, your odds are better, but this stuff costs money and takes time." So I thought to myself, Maybe, if you write these books about the least populated county in the least populated state in America, it would force you to deal with character and place and the things that you really enjoy reading about. Walt is a very intelligent individual, but there are ways he just doesn't fit into the modern world. He is, in some ways, a descendant of that Gene Autry or Roy Rogers type. Those times seemed more simplistic. Roy Rogers never had to kick down the door of a crack house. Walt has to deal with a more complex landscape. Yet it's amazing how well some of those old codes hold up: being a decent individual, being kind and looking out for people.

How do you navigate writing for the Native American characters represented in your work?
My ranch is just south of the Crow and Cheyenne reservations, and those people are my friends, neighbors and family. I'm always amazed when they leave Indians out of any contemporary Western story. And, yes, I do use the term "Indians," because my Indian friends make fun of me when I try to be politically correct and say Native Americans. They ask me, "Where were you born? In America? You're kind of a Native American too then, aren't you?" One of the quickest ways to dehumanize a group of people is by not allowing them a sense of humor. I think there has never been a group more maligned as to not having a sense of humor than the American Indian. Anybody who has spent time around Indians knows they work on about 17 different layers of irony. If you aren't aware of that irony, you will be the butt of it.

Santa Fe Reporter