Tooth and Claw
A Longmire Story
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5.0 • 3 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
In the tradition of Wait for Signs and The Highwayman, Craig Johnson is back with a short novel set in the Alaska tundra where a young Walt Longmire and Henry Standing Bear face off with powerful enemies who will do anything to get what they want.
Tooth and Claw follows Walt and Henry up to Alaska as they look for work after they both returned from serving in Vietnam. While working for an oil company in the bitter cold of winter, they soon encounter a ferocious polar bear who seems hell-bent on their destruction. But it’s not too long until they realize the danger does not lurk outside in the frozen Alaskan tundra, but with their co-workers who are after priceless treasure and will stop at nothing to get it.
Fans of Longmire will thrill to this pulse-pounding and bone-chilling novel of extreme adventure that adds another indelible chapter to the great story of Walt Longmire.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Walt Longmire faces off against an Alaskan polar bear in Johnson's underwhelming latest adventure for the Wyoming sheriff (after First Frost). In an extended flashback, Longmire recalls accepting a security job for an oil company drilling in Alaska in 1970. The drilling has caused tension with environmentalists in the region, who want 20 million acres of Alaskan land set aside as a national wildlife refuge. Walt is assigned to a survey team testing ice cores, but shortly after the group reaches their site, someone is killed. Initially, the evidence indicates a wild animal attack, but Blackjack, an Indigenous sniper on the security detail, warns the survivors it may actually be the work of "nanurluk, the great bear god who cannot be killed." As Longmire and his cohorts fight to stay alive, certain members of their party reveal sinister motives. The story is framed as a conversation between Walt and another survivor, which drains the story of suspense, and Johnson's gruff prose lacks the atmospherics necessary to pull off a survival thriller in the vein of The Terror. Some gratifyingly gruesome action aside, this one's best suited to series diehards.
