Open season
C. J. Box
Like Walt Longmire, Joe Pickett is a rural lawman in a remote western landscape, and Box shows the same respect for hard working people and the wild country around them.
11 books to read next
Books Like The Cold Dish
If you loved The Cold Dish by Craig Johnson
Readers who love The Cold Dish usually come for its wide-open Wyoming setting, its patient, humane sheriff, and a mystery that stays grounded in the lives of the people it touches. Craig Johnson balances a grim crime with dry humour and a strong sense of place, and the pace is unhurried but steady. It is a story about justice, friendship and the cost of revenge rather than a puzzle for its own sake.
Western crime with a lawman
The Ranger
Ace Atkins
Quinn Colson returns to a small Mississippi town with a clear moral code and a local crime that tests his loyalties, much as Longmire is pulled into a dangerous family feud.
The Dark Wind
Tony Hillerman
Navajo Tribal Police Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn investigates a murder on the reservation with quiet intelligence, combining cultural detail and open landscape in the way that drives The Cold Dish.
Reservation and community grief
The round house
Louise Erdrich
A brutal assault on a reservation woman sets off a search for justice, told through a teenager's eyes, and it shares The Cold Dish's focus on a crime's ripple effect on a close community.
Plainsong
Kent Haruf
Set on the Colorado plains, this quiet novel of ordinary people and hard decency captures the same emptiness and humanity that make Johnson's high plains feel so alive.
Mystic river
Dennis Lehane
A childhood tragedy resurfaces decades later when a murder reopens old wounds, and like The Cold Dish, the story turns on loyalty, revenge and the long shadow of the past.
Quiet detectives with a sense of place
Early autumn
Robert B. Parker
Spenser takes on a troubled boy and a web of old sins with wry humour and a strong moral centre, which will appeal to readers who enjoy Longmire's blend of toughness and warmth.
Track of the cat
Nevada Barr
Ranger Anna Pigeon investigates a death in a wild, isolated national park, delivering the remote setting and the sense of nature pressing in on human affairs that Johnson does so well.
The dry
Jane Harper
A federal investigator returns to a drought-stricken farming town to face an old tragedy, offering the same slow-burn mood, harsh landscape and tight community secrets found in The Cold Dish.
Go deeper into the West
Lonesome Dove
Larry McMurtry
This Pulitzer-winning epic of cattle drives and frontier friendship captures the same affection for the American West and its tough, funny, flawed characters that gives The Cold Dish its warmth.
English Creek
Ivan Doig
Set in 1930s Montana, this richly observed coming-of-age story shares Johnson's attention to the rhythms of western small towns and the humour found among hard-working families.
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