Hell and Back

Walt Longmire wakes in the middle of a road in Fort Pratt, Montana, covered in blood, missing a bullet from his gun, surrounded by the dead. The eighteenth Longmire novel is the series' most psychologically daring, abandoning the procedural framework entirely to place Walt in a dissociative landscape where the most dangerous adversary he has ever faced turns out to be his own fractured mind. The Northern Cheyenne concept of the Wandering Without provides the metaphysical architecture.

George Guidall's performance is extraordinary here. He is tasked with voicing a character who does not know himself, and he renders the disorientation without making it confusion — there's a steady, watchful quality to his narration that holds the listener even as the ground keeps shifting. For an audience long familiar with Walt's voice and manner, Guidall's subtle alterations in register make the psychological stakes visceral. A singular entry in a remarkable series.