Hell Is Empty | Craig Johnson

Hell Is Empty: A Longmire Mystery

Extended Synopsis

In Hell Is Empty, the seventh riveting installment of Craig Johnson’s bestselling frontier mystery series, Sheriff Walt Longmire is pushed to the absolute limits of his physical and mental endurance. Well-read and world-weary, Longmire has spent more than thirty years maintaining order in Wyoming’s Absaroka County. However, a routine transport assignment takes a dangerous turn when Raynaud Shade, an adopted Crow Indian rumored to be one of the country’s most ruthless sociopaths, confesses to the decade-old murder of a young boy and offers to lead authorities to the burial site hidden deep within the Bighorn Mountains.

What begins as a standard logistical operation turns intensely personal when Walt discovers a connection to the victim’s family. As a sudden, violent blizzard sweeps across the range, the tracking expedition fractures, leaving the veteran lawman stranded in the freezing expanse of the Cloud Peak Wilderness Area. Guided only by Native American mysticism and a battered paperback copy of Dante’s Inferno, Walt must navigate an unforgiving landscape of ice and stone. To ensure that both civil and spiritual justice are served, Longmire faces a desperate struggle against a calculating killer and the lethal elements of nature in an unforgettable test of survival.

Reader Targeting

• Devoted followers of the Walt Longmire mystery franchise seeking a pivotal, action-packed entry in the series chronology.
• Readers who enjoy high-stakes wilderness survival thrillers, psychological suspense, and atmospheric Western settings.
• Fans of crime fiction that seamlessly incorporates classical literary subtext, regional folklore, and Indigenous spiritual themes.

Accolades & Awards

• A celebrated New York Times bestseller praised for its taut prose, high-altitude suspense, and deep character introspection.

Author Biography

Craig Johnson is the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of the Walt Longmire mystery series, the foundational inspiration for the hit television drama Longmire. His novels have garnered prestigious honors including the Western Writers of America Spur Award, the Will Rogers Medallion, and France’s Prix du Roman Noir. Johnson resides in Ucross, Wyoming, a town with a population of twenty-five people, where the vast and rugged local environment serves as a continuous source of inspiration for his work.

Bust-Down Books: Armed With Education