Wyoming: Where the Coronavirus Barely Roams . . .

The first book I've finished during the Covid-19 Crisis has an apt title: Death Without Company. 

Death without company is the unfortunate demise for a number of people around the world, especially in Italy. It's tragic.

But Craig Johnson's second Longmire mystery is a perfect escape from the news in more densely populated places. The book is set in Wyoming, the least populated state in the U.S. Less than 600,000 people. And declining. Twenty-six cases of Covid 19. You've got a better chance of getting eaten by a grizzly.

Death Without Company is full of sassy, autonomous old people. No quarantining here. The novel begins with a suspected murder at the Durant Home for Assisted Living. I won't get into the plot-- it's too complicated-- but there are snowstorms and icy rivers and cold nights on the rez, as well as murder and mayhem and methane aplenty. And, as usual, Sheriff Longmire takes the brunt of the punishment (along with his buddy Henry Standing Bear).

I will definitely be distracting myself with mystery novels during the quarantine. There's nothing like a procedural crime fiction to take you away to a different place. The setting is actually significant-- it's not window-dressing. The details are important to solving the crime. You can go to New Mexico with Tony Hillerman, you can go to Northern Ireland with Adrian McKinty, you can journey to Scotland with Ian Rankin, you can roam Los Angeles with Harry Bosch . . . and it's better than a travelogue (because at any moment the narrator might get shot or stabbed).

I can barely follow the plot of most mystery novels I read-- I'm too thick-headed-- but I love observing a new place through the eyes of a detective.