A bit older than Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, the Kentucky lawman in FX's Justified series, we find ourselves with another quiet lawman with a cowboy hat, a bit of a grudge, and no woman (in this case the wife passed away rather than went away, as was the case with Raylan). Too traditional in its aim? Maybe, but the trailers for the show are enough to convince me Sheriff Longmire will be a man worth watching.
The reviews also tell me A&E may be onto something. Nancy deWolf Smith in her Wall Street Journal piece Crime Solving, Wyoming-Style writes:
Did I say the setting makes a standard genre look new again, or old in a new way? When the snow begins to fall in one scene, collecting on the brim of Walt's hat, it's so realistic you can smell the storm in the air. And the sight of Walt sitting next to a badly burned mare that's lying in the hay, while he's praying an Indian prayer and thinking of a lost love—the way that horse looks back at him is enough to make a grown person cry.
And if you want to read ahead, you can take a look at Craig Johnson's As the Crow Flies, the source of the A&E series. Craig Johnson lives in Ucross, Wyoming, and is the recipient of the Western Writers of America Spur Award for fiction, the Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award for fiction, the Nouvel Observateur Prix du Roman Noir, and the Prix 813.
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