Onyx reviews: Tooth and Claw by Craig Johnson

Reviewed by Bev Vincent, 12/21/2024

The weather has not always been kind to Sheriff Walt Longmire. His home turf of Absaroka County, Wyoming has brutal winters, and he's been stranded in the desert for days on end as well. Walt has also faced some human monsters in the past, but nothing compares to the beast in Tooth and Claw, a short Longmire novel.

The novel is framed as a flashback story Henry tells former sheriff Lucian Connally while he and Walt join Lucian for a game of chess and an illicit New Years Eve cookout at the Durant Home for Assisted Living. A chess maneuver known as "the Polar Bear System" inspires Henry to relate an adventure that happened in December 1970, shortly after they returned from Vietnam.

Henry had traveled to the North Slope of Alaska, inside the Arctic Circle, to try to bring Walt to his senses. Walt is working as a security officer on an oil rig, drinking too much and avoiding making important decisions about his future, including what to do about his rocky relationship with a young woman named Martha. Henry joins Walt on an outing to escort a US Geological Survey worker who is taking ice core samples looking for ice worms. They are accompanied by several other men and a sniper who mounts a hastily erected metal tower at each stop to protect the workers from polar bears, a task made all the more difficult by the abbreviated daylight hours and an oncoming storm.

There is a political battle over the region, which is protected against drilling, while the oil company wants to exploit the vast resources under the ice. The teams get split up and a massive polar bear starts stalking the workers. The malformed creature is reputed to be a nanurluk, a legendary bear god. It's invincible, insatiable and kills for pleasure rather than sustenance.

The storm prevents them from leaving, but they fortuitously encounter another legend: a ghost ship that was abandoned four decades earlier. It's the only place for them to weather the frigid temperatures and extreme conditions, but they're not the only ones who seek refuge there on the longest night of the year.

The sense of cold and dread is pervasive in this novella. Although survival is the dominant theme of the tale, it's not without a crime aspect. The pacing is relentless and the adversary is one that Walt and Henry can't negotiate with. They're in its territory—it knows all the secret routes and their weapons are mostly ineffective against a creature that stands up to twelve feet tall.

Of course, since the tale is told in flashback, readers know that at least Henry and Walt will survive, but it still makes for a harrowing and literally chilling adventure.