Bestseller Johnson's twisty 17th Walt Longmire novel (after 2020's Next to Last Stand) takes the Wyoming sheriff to Lame Deer, Mont., where troubled Jaya Long, the star of her high school basketball team, has been receiving threatening notes. Jaya's tribal police chief aunt worries that much of Jaya's bad behavior stems from the disappearance of her 17-year-old sister a year earlier on a drive back home from Billings and that the notes may be related to that tragedy. After Longmire questions a number of people close to Jaya, including her dysfunctional parents, dead bodies start turning up. Meanwhile, Jaya's team makes it to the state finals, and when someone roughs up the girls' coach, the gallant Longmire fills in and provides Jaya some lessons on the value of being a team player. As usual, Longmire, a Vietnam War vet, shrugs off some serious physical knocks, including falling into a canyon, on the way to a dramatic showdown with a killer and a bittersweet if hopeful ending. Fans will hope the sheriff has no plans to retire soon. Agent: Gail Hochman. Brandt & Hochman Literary. (June)

The sheriff of Absaroka County, Wyoming, has solved many an odd case, but none so odd as his search for a missing girl. Native American women have experienced extreme violence for years, many of them vanishing without a trace. So Walt Longmire isn't entirely surprised when a favor he's doing for Chief Lolo Long of the Cheyenne police leads him to a search for a missing teen. Jaya, Long's niece, is a star basketball player for Montana's Lame Deer Morning Stars high school who's gotten more than 20 notes threatening her life; her sister, Jeanie, is among the missing. Along with his friend Henry Standing Bear, Longmire realizes he must investigate Jeanie's disappearance to have any chance of helping Jaya, who has prodigious athletic talent but no team spirit. Jaya's mother is an alcoholic who's currently in the county jail, and her father, only recently out of jail, is involved with a White supremacy group that provides plenty of suspects. "It is not as unusual as you might think," Henry says. "Half-Natives go into the prison in Deer Lodge and come out indoctrinated." Longmire interviews the people who were with Jeanie when she vanished from a van that was stopped for repairs as well as others who might be connected to the case; the most surprising and useful information comes from Lyndon Iron Bull, a farmer who claims to have seen Jeanie some time later singing in a snowstorm. He introduces Longmire to the concept of the Wandering Without, a spiritual black hole that devours souls. Finding the concept fascinating, Longmire has his own encounter with something dangerous that can't be seen. A mysterious adventure that spotlights the horrific experiences of Native women whose abuse is often unseen and unreported. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.