Next to Last Stand

Charley Lee Stillwater dies of an apparent heart attack at the Wyoming Home for Soldiers and Sailors, leaving behind a fragment of an old painting and a shoebox containing a million dollars in cash. The painting connects to one of the most widely reproduced images in American history — and Walt Longmire finds himself untangling an art heist with implications that reach back to a famous military defeat. Craig Johnson's sixteenth Longmire novel is structured as an art mystery, the Wyoming setting doing its usual work of grounding the extraordinary in the credible.

George Guidall navigates the art historical dimension — the fate of the Custer's Last Fight painting, the complex provenance of wartime imagery — with the same naturalness he brings to the series' Cheyenne and Crow material. At just under eight hours, Next to Last Stand is an efficient and pleasurable entry in a series that continues to find new angles on its long-running cast and setting.