ACROSS THE
CHEYENNE RIVER
KIRKUS REVIEW
from: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/john-d-nesbitt/across-the-cheyenne-river/
A ranch hand looking for work in Wyoming finds
employment, true love and murder.
Russell Archer and Boot Beckett both arrive at
the Bar M Ranch on the same day, and they’re both decent guys, but it doesn’t
take long for Archer to distinguish himself. He’s a hard worker and a quick
study; apart from a dalliance with a good-time girl, he doesn’t fritter away
his leisure hours; he’s a good man in a fight, as a bully who threatens the
ranch finds to his sorrow; and he’s devoted to the Bar M and its owner, Lidge
Mercer. Even so, Archer is surprised when he’s about to leave at the end of the
season and Mercer asks him to stay over the winter and offers him a junior
partnership and a 30 percent financial stake in the growing enterprise. By this
time, Archer has started keeping company with Kate Blackwell, who helps out at
the local store, so he has good reason to stay. But the best-laid plans go
awry. Soon after Mercer tells Archer that Phillip Peavey, the ratlike fellow
who’s been hanging around the place dropping hints of trouble, is actually a
cousin who’s entangled them both in murder for money, Mercer himself is shot
dead. Even worse, Archer learns that Mercer never signed or filed the
partnership papers for the Bar M or the will that promised to make Archer his
heir. With no legal stake in the ranch, he determines to stay on anyway—putting
himself right in the cross hairs of whoever killed his boss.
Despite the rising body count, Nesbitt (Dark
Prairie, 2013, etc.) keeps it all slow and easy as a gentled horse, making
this tale the perfect escape even from other mystery fiction.
Pub Date: May
21st, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4328-2810-3
Publisher: Five
Star
Review Posted
Online: April 15th, 2014
Kirkus Reviews
Issue: May 1st, 2014
Wyoming sheriff Walt Longmire and Lucian Connally, his former boss, travel to a neighboring county to look into the suicide of Det. Gerald Holman. The detective was a longtime friend of Connally, and his death raised many questions; Walt is the best person to find the solutions. Time becomes an issue for Walt, not only in tracing the clues of Holman’s last case involving missing women, but also in trying to get to Philadelphia in time for the birth of his first grandchild. In this 11th series installment (after Spirit of Steamboat), Longmire displays his usual down-to-earth charm and dogged determination asking questions of the local sheriff, his sister who owns the local strip club, a lonely clerk whose post office is facing eminent closure, and Holman’s wife and daughter, who seem to know more than they are telling. Walt grasps the connection between the vanished women and Holman’s death, and not even a herd of bison in Custer State Park can stop him.