Any Other Name

This action-packed new Walt Longmire adventure has the heroic high-plains sheriff investigating a fellow lawman’s suicide. This requires looking into the late detective’s last case, a cold one involving three county women who went missing some time ago. The trail leads him to Deadwood and the Black Hills of South Dakota. There’s a shoot-out in a blinding snowfall that amidst a large herd of stampeding buffalo, an episode in which two trains race to avoid a head-on collision, and some breathlessly suspenseful moments with Longmire about to be crushed by thousands of pounds of coal. Guidall’s at his avuncular best as Longmire, the novel’s wryly self-deprecating narrator. He also provides an appropriately gravelly croak for the sheriff’s hard-drinking retired boss, Lucian Connally, a deep native American accent for crony Henry Standing Bear, and appropriate assorted masculine voices for the male-heavy cast. He finds a little room in his larynx to squeak out a few respectable female voices, too, leading with undersheriff Vic Moretti. It’s a fast, occasionally funny, non-stop audio thrill ride. A Viking hardcover. (May)