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.

Dave Continues His Crime (Fiction) Spree!

Now I know the reason Michael Connelly sells so many books-- The Fifth Witness makes you feel like you're a lawyer in a big media murder case . . . and while the bulk of the book takes place in the courtroom, there's enough extra stuff to keep things moving: sub-plots and violence and romance-- and right after I finished that one, I started The Black Box, which begins with the 1992 L.A. Riots and takes a convoluted journey to the present, as Harry Bosch investigates the execution of a Danish reporter that was present for the chaos and died in it. . . I will definitely read more of his novels in the future (but not all of them, as he's written thirty-plus books . . . you hear that Harper Lee?)

Bone Tomahawk!

If you're looking for something to watch that will make the menace of Covid-19 seem trifling, check out the Old West/horror flick Bone Tomahawk. 

Warning: at times it is gruesome.

The story is set in the late 1800s, out in the fabled West, in a small settlement (ironically) called Bright Hope. 

It's back in the days when if you get wounded in the leg, you might die of gangrene. And the sheriff-- Kurt Russell-- has a penchant for shooting suspicious folk in the leg.

But gangrene is the least of your worries if you live in Bright Hope. We learn what the real danger is from an erudite Native American the townsfolk call the Professor. Only he could deliver the bad news (if a white-man described what is to come, it would sound like xenophobic racist bullshit). The Professor explains that the two good people who have been abducted-- a helpful and pretty wife and the deputy to the sheriff-- have been taken by a tribe of indigenous cave-dwelling cannibalistic troglodytes.

He is not optimistic about the prospect of saving them.

The movie becomes comic for a bit, as a ragtag band of folks: one on crutches, one old, one something of a fop, and Kurt Russel-- the old sheriff with a few tricks up his sleeve-- make their way through the high plains to the troglodyte caves.

It's The Searchers meets The Descent.

There are some great lines and a wonderful campfire conversation about how hard it is to read a book in the bath (with a brilliant low-tech solution).

Then things get ugly.

This was a nice break from the gritty realism of The Wire and Better Call Saul and Bosch and even The Expanse (which is as realistic as you get for a sci-fi show, pretty much the opposite of Star Wars).