Onyx reviews: Return to Sender by Craig Johnson

Reviewed by Bev Vincent, 04/05/2025

Craig Johnson has a home-and-away strategy to writing his novels featuring Absaroka County Sheriff Walt Longmire, which means that alternating books take place in the county seat and some place farther afield. Return to Sender is an away novel, although it's still set in Wyoming. The Red Desert is located in the south-central part of the state, home to the largest living dune system in the United States. It is also the location of the country's longest mail route, over three hundred miles, served by the "loneliest mail carrier in the nation."

That mail carrier, Blair McGowan, who has a reputation as a political activist, has been missing for almost four months. Walt's late wife's cousin, a postal inspector, asks him to go undercover as a contract carrier covering her route to see if he can figure out why. Accompanied by his faithful companion, Dog, Walt leaves the local policing duties in the hands of his under-sheriff and fiancé, Vic Moretti. One of the book's most entertaining developments has Walt, for the first time ever, acquiring a cell phone, although its the most rudimentary flip phone he can find. (He still doesn't own a credit card.)

His attempts at subterfuge don't last long: he doesn't resemble a postal worker and his stature makes him instantly recognizable. That doesn't deter him from his appointed rounds. After buying the distinctive 1968 Travelall previously owned by McGowan (sold by her sketchy boyfriend a month after she vanished), he sets out into the desert to deliver mail and look for clues. He isn't optimistic about finding McGowan—the search area is immense and she's been missing too long.

He soon learns about a nomadic cult called The Order of the Red Gate, whose members have been living in the desert waiting to be taken away by aliens. McGowan had a special relationship with them, leaving their mail under painted rocks and picking up the outgoing post. Zeno Carruthers, their leader, is a charismatic former actor with a reputation as a grifter. McGowan herself has some cinematic experience, having once appeared on an episode of Mysteries from Beyond where she talks about being abducted by aliens. Two other members of the cult, though, have a less-than-stellar reputation: Bible-quoting Freebee Leland, who provides security and strongly resembles Charles Manson, and his partner Lowell Omman, who has no body hair and never utters a word.

There are several twists to the tale of the missing McGowan, who may have joined the cult voluntarily or may be held in their thrall. Any time Longmire ends up somewhere with a harsh environment, it's pretty much guaranteed that he's going to be stranded in conditions that would kill a lesser person. In previous adventures, he's been caught in blizzards and abandoned in a Mexican desert. This time he isn't alone, but that doesn't make his circumstances any less dire.

The book is chock full of trivia about the postal service, state history, serial killers and the red desert, which Longmire recounts to anyone who will listen. When no one else is around, he talks to Dog. Otherwise, Longmire operates mostly on his own. There is one section that features the other regulars from the series, when he attends a banquet where his daughter expects to be announced as the next State Attorney General. However, Longmire's past clouds this political appointment, and it is made clear to him that one of the conditions for it to happen is for him to retire and fade into the background.

Two subplots in Return to Sender are sure to reappear in subsequent installments of the series. First is the question of Longmire's retirement. He's been considering it for a while now, but he resists when someone else tries to make the decision for him. He wonders who would fill his extremely large shoes. The other is the matter of the disappearance of his childhood friend, Ruth One Heart, now an ATF agent, who was involved in the violent shootout at the end of The Longmire Defense. Longmire and Vic have a scene with the Soviet agent who was hired to kill him, and it's pretty sure that we'll see Maxim Sidarov again.