Review: Another Man's Moccasins by Craig Johnson

This is the fourth book in the Walt Longmire series. I'm quite a bit behind since I'd accidentally got on the waiting list at the library on an original copy of the book: they've since been re-released with the TV series branding so more copies are available, but if you were on the other list, you didn't get offered them. It's worth checking if you've been waiting for a series.

Anyway. This book is the usual suspects in a murder investigation set in Wyoming... with a secondary plot of flashbacks to the main character's time in Vietnam. I don't know really anything about the Vietnam war except for the use of Agent Orange (shudder), so I can't speak to realism or anything, but it didn't cast it as a heroic fight or anything, which seems legitimate. It was perhaps a bit unfortunate, writing wise, that I would get more interested in one story or the other and wanted to skip forward to continue it.

I'm quite enjoying this series. As always, it's a bit odd reading them and watching the (halfway unrelated) television series at the same time... I like the show in both mediums, but you really do have to keep them a bit compartmentalized since they don't follow the same paths.

Review: Brute Strength by Susan Conant

Brute Strength is the 19th (!) book in the Holly Winter's series, aka, the dog mysteries with the malamutes. I suspect I haven't read every book, but I must have read a lot of them. I think we slowed down on them because the reintroduction of the characters became too repetitive, but having been away from the series a while now, I didn't feel that way about this book.

Interestingly, if you didn't know this was a mystery series, you could read about halfway through this book before it ever became clear to you - up to then it's just a book about some dogs and their people. The main character, as usual, talks and thinks about dogs a lot, and I bemusedly related to the tendency to greet the dog before the owner. If you know it's a mystery series, you can guess a lot more, but I didn't find it too distracting. M may have thought I was a bit odd as I predicted the plot of the book at him, though.

The mystery and wrap up was a little abrupt and far fetched, as you might expect for this sort of cozy. I didn't mind - it was good fun and a pleasant break from the other novel I've been reading and putting down constantly.