A smooth-talking charmer, a cosmopolitan journalist, a reclusive monk, a half-Native ranch hand, and the Absaroka Sheriff all walk into a bar in Absaroka County — but this time it’s no joke.
It’s the lineup of suspects in the murder of a widely disliked man named Pepper McKay, found dead at his ranch in Crazy Woman Canyon. And it’s the start of what will be some long and harrowing nights for Walt Longmire in the latest Longmire mystery, “The Brothers McKay.”
In the 22nd installment of the Longmire Mystery series, set for release on May 26, New York Times bestselling author Craig Johnson has reimagined Fyodor Dostoevsky’s classic “The Brothers Karamazov,” on the high plains of Wyoming, swapping 19th-century Russia for rugged ranch country and wildfire-scarred mountainsides.
Right off the bat, Johnson lets the reader know the victim isn’t a sympathetic character. So much so that no one in the town is surprised someone killed him at all. They’re only surprised it took so long. The man gathered enemies like Wyoming wind collects tumbleweeds.
Those enemies even included Absaroka Sheriff Walt Longmire himself.
“Walt’s been in office 25, 30 years,” Johnson said. “He’s had interactions with an awful lot of people in Absaroka County, and some of those interactions have not been pleasant.”
It was fun to create that kind of background, Johnson added.
“That’s kind of the joy of writing a series of books,” Johnson said. “As you go along, you find yourself to be almost like a card dealer at a casino. You’re kind of like a croupier. You don’t throw out all 52 cards in the deck. You flip them out there one at a time, revealing character as you go along.”
People Only Think They Know Dostoevsky
“The Brothers McKay” will be a Matryoshka doll set of mysteries nested within more mysteries.
The first layer the book dives into are unresolved questions about Dostoevsky’s 993-page mystery, which Johnson first read when he was just 13 or so years old.
“I came from one of those families that you always got a book on Christmas Eve that was your gift to look at, so you’d have something to read through the holidays,” Johnson said. “And I remember my father, I think he was making a statement, so he dropped that one on me.”
After Johnson had finished reading the book, his dad wanted to know what he thought about it.
“So, I said, you know what, it’s one of the most incredible treatises of community and humanity and theology and politics and history,” Johnson said. “And I threw patricide in there too, because I think that was just for his benefit. But I just said, you know, such an incredible novel, but also one of the worst murder mysteries ever written.”
When his dad asked him why he thought that Johnson replied that the culprit was so obvious from the get-go.
“If you got to book eight and you can’t figure out who it was that killed the old man, you’re kind of a moron,” a 13-year-old Johnson confidently replied.
But was he sure that it was so obvious, his father wondered, asking if Johnson had considered that Dostoevsky had intended to write a series of three books, rather than one.
“Do you think it’s possible that in the first book, Dostoevsky was attempting to throw you off and give you a little bit of a red herring?” his father asked. “So that you would think you knew who the killer was, but it was not actually the real killer?”
Johnson has been wrestling with that idea ever since.
“I was talking with my French publisher and he said, ‘Do you know that there have been three essays written by these Russian scholars, where they’ve attempted to figure out who it was that Dostoevsky actually had in mind as the killer in the Brothers Karamazov?’” Johnson said.
That was new but interesting information to Johnson, who decided to work with a Russian translator to acquire an English version of these theories.
“I read them, and I was just utterly blown away, because it just, all of them fit,” Johnson said. “All of them were just perfect for what Dostoevsky might have been shooting for in the long run. So, I decided at that point in time, ‘You know what, I’m going to pick one of these, and I’m going to utilize it as the plot for ‘The Brothers McKay.’”
A Russian Spy Returns
The result is a “red meat” mystery novel that follows a more classic line, Johnson said.
And a challenge that stretched his abilities — taking Dostoevsky’s archetypes and translating them into believable western characters, each with a credible motivation to commit a crime like patricide, where the most powerful emotions known to man are in play.
“With all of these characters, you’ve defined a situation where not only do you believe one of them might have done it, now you believe perhaps four of them might actually have had a reason for doing it,” Johnson said. “Or maybe none of them. So that’s always the one where you walk a fine line like that, where you’re trying to make it believable, but also credible, that these characters might have done what it is that they did.”
But it took more than just mirroring some of Dostoevsky’s suspects to draw the kinds of parallels Johnson wanted. Dostoevsky’s work is a masterful examination of the human spirit, famous for its complex exploration of faith, doubt, and morality.
To bring that out, Johnson relied on a character readers have seen before, and a character Walt hoped never to see again, the Russian spy, Maxim Sidorov.
“I needed a natural-born Russian to respond to those types of things,” Johnson said. “And then again, he’s also tied into the plot line where Walt has a family member who is missing.”
Fortunately, for Johnson, Sidorov was believably up for parole. Unfortunately for Walt, however, there was no one else but the Sheriff of Absaroka County to serve as his parole manager.
“That’s the problem if you’re in a rural area like that,” Johnson said. “And that’s why I chose Walt’s occupation. The great thing, for better or worse, like for in reality, it might be more of the worst, but certainly in literature, it’s a benefit that the poor sheriffs in Wyoming get every job that nobody else wants dumped on them.”
When The Hero Turns Out To Be A Mule
As if Sidarov showing up unannounced isn’t bad enough, Longmire also finds himself saddled with a mule instead of the trusty steeds he’s a little more comfortable with.
“Walt will have a great admiration for mules before the book is over,” Johnson promised, with a chuckle, adding, “And I remember — my grandfather was a blacksmith, and he had a great admiration for mules. He loved them.”
Johnson, too, learned a lot more about mules than he wanted to know on a trip down into the Grand Canyon.
“The thing is … a horse will get itself tangled in barbed wire, and yank and jerk and try to get free,” Johnson said. “It will do itself more damage than the barbed wire did initially. A mule, if it gets caught in barbed wire, will just stand there and wait for someone to come and get it untangled. It’s just a lot more patient animal than maybe a horse is.”
One of the first things Johnson was told during his trip down the Grand Canyon on a mule is that there are no “suicidal” mules.
“So, if you find yourself in a situation on the trail where you are arguing with the mule about what it is you’re doing, you are wrong,” Johnson said. “Let the mule do what it wants to do, because it knows more about what it’s doing.”
That dynamic meeting up with a sheriff who can be just as stubborn about what he’s doing and why makes for some fun scenes in the book, Johnson added.
“I don’t want to give too much of the plot away,” he said. “But there is a mule by the name of Borax, and those of us of a certain age will remember the I think 50-mule team borax used to use as their selling point.”
Borax, Johnson said, will wind up being Walt’s absolute savior, in a book that’s going to put not just Longmire’s sleuthing skills, but his grit, his endurance, and his downright stubbornness to the test.
“The mule definitely becomes one of the most important characters in the entire book,” Johnson said.
Turning Up The Heat In Final Chase Scene
Dostoevsky might supply the philosophical heat in this modern-day twist on a murder mystery classic, but Wyoming supplied a more literal kind of heat.
Wildfires were happening all over the state when Johnson was working on this particular mystery and ultimately found their way into the book.
“I was flying up from Denver, looking out the window at about 10 o’clock at night,” Johnson said. “And the really big fires were going out there on the Powder River. My gosh, it just looked like a wall of flame. It was only a couple of miles from where my ranch is that I built myself.”
That gave Johnson an intriguing — if uncomfortable — front row seat into modern firefighting techniques.
It was incredible to see, Johnson said, from the hotshot jumpers and the planes from Canada that scooped water by the cargo load from Lake Desmet to all the technical advancements and the “lengths that everybody was going to try to save these incredible natural areas.”
“Newspaper articles are a catalyst to get you started,” he said. “But then you have to jump in and do all the research. Like finding out what kind of plane the Canadians are flying and how fast, or can the lower their speed when they’re picking up water, and all of the little details to make a story like this come to life and make it real enough that it will seem real to a worldwide audience.”
Johnson talked to a lot of firefighters and walked the blackened aftermath for the book, ensuring that the moment when a carefully laid plan becomes a death-defying scramble would ring true to exhausting reality.
“When you’re writing these novels … you don’t just write about another day,” Johnson said. “It has to be something happening that would make it incredible. So, I thought to myself, OK, if we were to have a forest fire up in the Bighorn Mountains, what’s the one place I can think of that would be the absolute worst place for it to happen?”
The answer was Crazy Woman Canyon.
“You’ve got those big rock cliffs on either side, but still enough forage and fuel for a massive fire to come roaring down that canyon,” Johnson said. “So, it would put Walt in a situation that would certainly not be like every other day, and that really became one of the important elements in the book.”
Book Tour Is Coming To Wyoming Soon
Johnson has already set up a 21-stop tour schedule to promote the Brothers McKay beginning in Spokane, Washington, on May 26 and ending in Sheridan, Wyoming June 16. His other Wyoming stops include Cheyenne and Casper on June 10 and Gillette on June 11.
Traveling for a book tour, he added, isn’t as glamorous as people might think. It means zero-dark-thirty takeoffs amid unpredictable weather and tight connections.
Often, by the time he’s done with a book signing, the only food available is from a drive-through on his way to another airport.
“I always laugh about it a little bit, because people think that book tours are all fun and enjoyable, you know, how exotic and all this,” Johnson said. “But no, by the time you finish signing books, you’re lucky if you can grab something to eat before you have to go straight back to the hotel and go to bed.”
One time, Johnson sent his publicist a photo of his Jack in the Box meal.
“Just to show them I was not, you know, abusing the money they were spending on book tours,” Johnson said, laughing. “But I have to say that I really enjoy the tours. I do have a great time and I’ve always enjoyed it.”
It’s his chance to meet the fans, many of whom are so excited to get the latest book and talk about it.
“My gosh, is there a better way to spend your time than that?” he said. “I mean writing has to be No. 1, but it’s really a wonderful balance, so I’ve never really minded the tours at all.”
Next Novel Already In The Hopper
Fans don’t have to worry about the next Longmire novel. Johnson has already written and turned it in — six months early.
“That’s one reason why I’m one of their favorite authors,” Johnson said. “They never have to bug me to get a book. I’ve never turned one in late.”
This one, though, is probably a record.
“Usually, I turn them in a month or two early,” he said. “I’ve never turned one in this early.”
Part of the reason the writing went so well, Johnson believes, is because the ending of “The Brothers McKay” has a clue about what’s going to happen in the next one.
“So, it really kind of hit the ground running,” Johnson said. “The title of that one is called ‘A Soft White Damn.’”
That’s another literary reference, this time from an E. E. Cummings poem, which has a line that says, “The snow doesn’t give a soft, white damn whom it touches.”
“It’s another one of the ones that’s more of a thriller and kind of a manhunt kind of thriller,” Johnson said. “I’ve always loved those manhunt books like Jeffrey Household’s ‘Rogue Male,’ and all of that.”
Those are challenging to write because of the isolated structure, Johnson said.
“Walt finds himself in a situation where he’s being kind of hunted by some experts in the field,” Johnson said. “And certainly, individuals who are a lot more technologically advanced than Walt is, and it’s out on the very edges of the earth. I can’t give you any more detail than that, but it’s an extreme situation for Walt and very, very different from ‘The Brothers McKay.’”
For those who can’t wait until May 2027 for that work, Johnson will have another set of short stories coming out Nov. 2 called “Have Courage.”
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
