The Brothers McKay (2026) Craig Johnson

First page:

I have love/hate feelings about about Longmire novels.

• love: the Wyoming settings:
  • this one is a dead rich guy in Crazy Woman Creek, situated in the spectacular Crazy Woman Canyon
• love the quirky Wyoming people
• The protagonists are charming
  • Walt is cool.
    • He’s a large person. He can be physically intimidating if he’s of a mind to.
    • Lots of funny stories from his past
    • Storehouse of obscure useless knowledge
      • detailed history of the game of Clue
    • Storehouse of bad jokes:
      • If you’re caught in a thunderstorm on a golf course what should you do?”
      • “Hold up your 1-iron, because even God can’t hit a 1-iron“
    • But sometimes, it’s all just a little too damn precious!
  • Vic is cool.
    • She’s not a big part of this book, but she’s always good for a string of curses and some subliminal sex appeal.
    • And it gives me a reason to picture Katie Sackett!
  • Walt’s daughter Cady is cool. See next section on that!
• Examples of too cute-ness:
  • The May-September romance of Walt and Vic pisses me off!
    No old dude in my personal experience has ever swept the hot 30-something in their life off their feet to have hot sex and plan to get married.
  • Walt’s daughter Cady was just appointed Wyoming Attorney General. C’mon now…

The Story

• There is a scenic area called Crazy Woman Canyon, with (duh) Crazy Woman Creek running through it. (see pic below)
• An enterprising family named the Harrises, the first non-natives in the area, built a farmhouse there and got REALLY rich off of the natural wealth of the area – minerals and cattle at the time.
• 2 The last surviving Harris was a woman named BeeBee who got swept off her feet by a fella named Pepper McKay. A neer-do-well, hard-core asshole and sexual predator.
• Suddenly he was the owner of the ranch and all that delicious wealth.
• He and BeeBee got good tax advice and turned the gorgeous, amazing ranch house from a tax liability to a tax asset by making it a dude ranch!
• He had “3 and a half” children, all sons. [compare Brothers Karamazov below]
  • David – 40-ish, from first wife
    • He is the most like Dad means that he wants to fornicate with every female in sight.
  • Ian – late 30’s, mom was BeeBee
    • journalist workind for the High Plains Bulletin
  • Alan – early 30’s, mom was BeeBee
    • a monk(!)

Fast forward to now, and good ole Pepper is found floating face-down in Crazy Woman Creek. We’ve met all the family and close associates, and not a single person is sorry he’s dead.

15 There’s a funny section where Walt shows off his knowledge of stupid stuff and explains the history of the game of Clue. I think he’s setting us up to make this book a clue game. [good guess but no, he’s too busy making it the Brothers Karamozov]

19 We’re already met the help: the ranch foreman and his long-suffereing wife. So far she looks to me to have the most reason to kill the dude.

25 Turns out Walt REALLY didn’t like the dead guy, because it tried to rape Walt’s wife many, many years ago.

Now we meet the family. They seem like nice folks at first introduction. That can’t last! 🙂

One conflict, the always randy dad and the extremely handsome olderst son were shtupping the same young woman!

33 The new Attorney General (Walt’s daughter) informs him that a shady Russian fellow has requested to be relocated to be relocated to Durant WY.

He’s on some kind of parole, wearing an ankle bracelet and all.

34 This sub-plot is really confusing to me. There is a woman named Ruth One Heart who is related to Walt, who was some kind of intelligence spook. She is being held captive in Russia and Walt wants to save her (of course) … like I say, confusing..

54 In case we are not convinced that the dead guy was a sleaze, turns out he was hiding 63 million dollars from his kids!

56 We meet the Russian guy. For reasons I don’t quite get he’s sleeping in the jail. By Walt’s rules, this means Walt or somebody has to sleep there too.

108 If we didn’t have enough colorful characters, Henry shows up.
Full-blood Cheyenne, memorably played by Lou Diamond Philips in the TV series.

177 The Russian guy points out that it might not have been a random rock, mighta been the Cheyenne war club the rich folks had hanging on their living room wall.

That changes everything, in that it makes it a pre-meditated crime as opposed to “crime of passion”.

They drive back to the house, the fire has finally arrived!

182 The war club is gone from the wall and no one knows where,

189 Manx, the illegitimate son is dead, murdered they think, in a fake autoerotic asphyxiation!

203 Between the fire and the first murder, there is enough news here that TV cameras and a News van are parked outside. For the same reason, the governor has decided to helicopter in.

They’re all there milling around outside, when Vic passes out in the parking lot. She had drunk some of Manx’s tea, so thi is how we find out that it was laced with the date-rape drug.

I guess that explains how somebody got him to hang himself.

209 The Russian guy as another epiphany, namely that the murders are following the plot of The Brothers Karamazov! I just looked it up, prety similar!

David’s fiance is Catherine Verkov another throwback to the book.

227 She calls them the Brothers McKay, the book title, … it all fits together!

228 Alan’s doctoral dissertation was on The Brothers Karamazov.

235 As we all knew it would eventually, the raging forest fire is finally raging their way.

Now everything is happening at once. Walt gets everybody pointed down the canyon to evacuate!

Not quite everybody, the 100 year old monk dies during the night.

There’ a mule. He belonged to Manx, the second victim. Longmire can’t convince him to leave, or do anything really. Henry tells Walt that you have to explain things to mules so they understand. Walt spends a lot the rest of the book doing just that!

On the way down the canyon, he collects the novice who hitchhiked in the middle of the book. He had arrived in a Ford Pinto, but it dies in the middle of the road.

270 Walt is SO late that the Fire helicopter drops a couple of loads of lake water on him. He sprains his ankle, so we get to see him riding down the canyon on the back of the mule Borax.

The rest of the book is Walt, the novice (Rakin) and Borax the mule doing what they can to stay alive until the fire burns past them.

The reason they’re in this mess is that Rakin was still hiding in the woods for reasons I forgot already and Walt had to delay his exit because that’s what Walt does!

[That’s another thing that annoys me about these books, Walt is inhumanly perfect as a hero. The normal reaction at some point would be that if the kid wants to kill himdrlf by running INTO the fire, you gotta let him go and save yourself (and the mule). But not Walt…]

299 There’s a long discussion about the nature of faith … zzzz …

302 Then the final big, exciting action scene of the book, a herd of terrified elk comes blasting down the camyon.

Walt comes out ok by staying very close to the mule. but Rakin is a moron yet again and tries to run away. Walt sustains minor injuries trying to stop him. Rakin ends up getting goredand we thing crippled for life, but I’m all out of f-cks to give about that guy.

Much more fire drama …

339 … Finally they canter out of the fire to the “remarkably undamaged lodge” (yay!)

There’s only 12 more pages, and we still don’t know who did the darned murders!

Walt is a the corral getting Borax squared away, when a relatively minor character, the deputy abbot (second in command monk) named Brian Schiffer sneaks up with a gun on him.

He’s the ONE!!!

The wanted to be the next prior, but Elder Zebrowski appointed Alan instead and generally didn’t give him the respect he thought he is due.

340 Recall that Alan made a life-long study of The Brothers Karamazov (becaue of the thorny theological issues in it).

Schiffer and our buddy Rakin fantasize about doing to Alan’s family what happens in the book.

Rakin was the same useless waste of oxygen he has been throughout the book,but Schiffer is a serious dude and more than a little crazy, so he actually executed the plan, he actually does kill the dad.

Then he kills Manx because he’s figuring it out. Then kills Elder Z for the same reason.

Doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, but that’s what it says here on the book.

So this guy as a big gun trained right on Walt, and there’s no one around for miles, how’s Walt gonna get out of this one???

Well, Checkhov’s Gun is gonna save him!

We’d been reminded a couple of times that Borax has a quaint trait, that if you scratch his chin a certain way, his right leg shoots out suddenly and violently.

341 So Schiffer is out carefully keeping the ule between him and big Walt, so walt does the chin-scratch thing and BOOM, Schiffer iscold, and that’s that.

343 The crew is all back in Walt’s office at the Sherrif’s station. Evidently the Russian dude has been added to the crew. It’s all pretty stardard Longmire fare, except at the very, very end there is a treaser that the next book may be Walt and the Russian going to Siberia to rescue Ruth One Heart from shadowy forces.

I dunno …. I have’m gonna need a few months break before I wade into that….