Distinctly Montana Magazine

w w w . d i s t i n c t l y m o n t a n a . c o m 27 W ITH ALL DUE RESPECT TO THE OTHER WRITERS and their fictional creations featured in this issue, the de- tective that we would most like to sit and have a beer with has got to be Walt Longmire. And if we could have that beer in the Red Pony, with Walt's buddy Henry Standing Bear, well, that'd just be a continual soirée, wouldn't it? Longmire has appeared in seventeen novels and is much beloved by anyone who likes their detectives to have a little sense of humor to go with their brooding. In addition to the ro- bust popularity of the Longmire novels, the television adaptation thereof, starring Robert Taylor, Katee Sackhoff, and Lou Dia- mond Phillips, was a smash hit and continues to find new fans on Netflix. While his job is as the Sher- iff of the (fictional) Absaroka County, Wyoming, he frequently comes to Montana. He was first married in Miles City, and later had an occasion to pretend to be an insurance investigator from Billings. But his latest mystery takes Longmire to eastern Mon- tana, where a tragic case will vex even his crime-solving abilities. DISTINCTLY MONTANA: FIRST OF ALL, MR. JOHNSON, PLEASE LET US SAY THAT WE'RE BIG FANS OF YOURS, AND WE'RE A LITTLE JEALOUS OF WYOMING FOR BE- ING ABLE TO LAY CLAIM TO YOU. ANY CHANCE YOU'LL EVER REALIZE THE GRASS IS GREENER UP HERE IN MONTANA? CRAIG JOHNSON: Well, thank you. I've always taken the view my Chey- enne friend Leroy Whiteman had when he talked about that bor- der between the two states, "You know, I have hunted and fished that entire area, and I've never seen that line they talk about." I spend quite a bit of time up in Montana and just got back from drifting the Bighorn River with my friend Hale Harris, so you don't have to sell me on the place. YOU ARE OFTEN COMPARED TO YOUR OWN CHARACTER, WALT LONGMIRE. I FIND IT INTER- ESTING TO NOTE, THOUGH, THAT HE'S SIGNIFICANTLY OLDER THAN YOU, AS HE SERVED IN VIETNAM, DURING WHICH YOU WERE A PRETTY YOUNG KID. WHY DID YOU MAKE WALT OLDER THAN YOURSELF? When they first started entertaining the thought of the TV show Longmire, the executives floated the idea of taking the Walt from my books and making him younger, but rapid- ly came to the conclusion that the world-weary twenty-six- year-old might be more than viewers could bear. I kind of agree with that. I wanted Walt to be the sadder but wiser sheriff with a lot of history and baggage to explore in subse- quent novels. There are a lot of folks in law enforcement that come from a military background, and for Walt to be able to do the things he does, he'd need to have acquired those skills and knowledge from somewhere. As to the two of us being sim- ilar, my wife has the best remark about that. "Walt is who Craig would like to be in ten years, it's just that he's off to a very slow start." WALT IS REMARKABLY WELL-READ, READING OR QUOTING WRITERS LIKE BALZAC, CONAN DOYLE, AND JOHN DONNE. WHY DID YOU CHOOSE TO MAKE LONGMIRE SO WELL-READ? When I first started writing the novels, he wasn't so well-read, and I have to admit that I found him dull, so I decided he needed to be smarter than me so that he could keep me on my toes as well as my audience. I just figured that since the books were going to be written in first-person, I should make Walt's head an interesting place to be. It's fascinating in that most people think of cow- boys as being illiterate, but back in the day, most of them spent the off-season wintered-up, and what's the one thing most took with them?—a stack of books. Heck, the most mentioned read- ing material in Louis L'Amour was Plutarch's Lives… THE WORLD OF LONGMIRE IS MUCH LIKE OURS, BUT A LITTLE DIFFERENT, IN THAT ABSAROKA COUNTY IS FICTIONAL AND THE NORTHERN CHEYENNE RESERVATION IS PLACED WITHIN WY- OMING. WHAT ARE THE ADVANTAGES OF WRITING IN AN INVENTED GEOGRAPHY? Well, I never wanted people to become confused and think I was writing documentaries. I kind of swung Absaroka County north and the Northern Cheyenne and Crow Reser- vations south because I wanted more of a Native presence in the novels. I also think you have a certain amount of literary license, or you can become hidebound. I remember doing ride-alongs with the sheriff here in Johnson County and him turning to me and saying, "You've got a mistake right there in the first chapter of The Cold Dish (the first Longmire nov- interview by JOSEPH SHELTON

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