NOT YOUR NORMAL LONGMIRE TALE: CRAIG JOHNSON'S TOOTH AND CLAW

I hope you can excuse my narcissism, but it became difficult for me to read Tooth & Claw, a novella featuring author Craig Johnson’s Walt Longmire character, without thinking the author was writing partly as an argument to me. Over many times and many beers, he has needled me over my love of pulp and men’s adventure fiction. I argue that while not high literature, you can learn a lot from the better practitioners in pacing, the ability to create suspension of disbelief, and clearly convey action. Tooth And Claw felt like Craig was telling me to hold his Rainier.

He takes Walt back to the early seventies, fresh out of Vietnam, working as Head of Security at an oil installation, above The Arctic Circle, hiding from life in Wyoming, and the world in general.  His friend, Henry Standing Bear, comes up to visit, hoping to bring him back to the lower forty-eight. They both take a side gig, helping some scientists set up a small research operation involving ice worms in the tundra. After their plane sets down, Henry finds an abandoned polar bear cub next to his murdered mother and sibling. He and Walt go back to the plane with the cub to find a large and mean violent polar bear has killed one of the crew. When a storm tosses the plane around, the animal stalks them outside. They also learn that another killer may be in their midst with an agenda bigger than the worms. Their only hope for survival may lie in a mysterious ship they discovered from 1931.

This is a thoroughly entertaining one-damn-thing-after-another yarn. Craig works writing muscles we haven’t seen before and pulls it off like it’s nothing. He tips his hat to Alistair MacLean of Guns Of The Navarone and Ice Station Zebra fame in the introduction. It definitely has some of those elements with a crew of highly trained people thrown together on a mission where there is more than planned. The story also has more than a touch of Michael Crichton as well, in the way it uses science and history for solid footing to leap into the fantastic in a way we buy. The tone of paranoia in the Arctic cold also reminded me of John Carpenter’s The Thing. This may be his most cinematic work.

It helps that the story is in novella form. It allows Craig to keep it all in a tight package, where the plot never overstays its welcome, the way many over 400-page modern pulp tomes often do today. The pace increases with each chapter. However, he is also able to put his own brand on this style of story with his trademark character interaction and humor. They help ground the plot and giving a human element that veers this toward being something respectable. Luckily, this story knows better.

Tooth And Claw is a blast of a weekend read. You can sense the fun Craig had in discovering a different kind of tale he could spin. I still hold my position on pulp and men’s adventure fiction, I just need more time between our next beer sessions to build a rebuttal. Someone hand me a Shiner.