Jessica Woodbury's Reviews > Winter Counts

I often start my reviews of crime novels by identifying the type of protagonist. It tells you a lot about the book, and a lot of books use the same handful of tired tropes. WINTER COUNTS has the "tough guy" protagonist, usually enough to send me running in the opposite direction. But the thing about these character types isn't that they're inherently bad, it's that they're just so poorly and lazily executed much of the time. This isn't one of those times. Usually the tough guy is past rock bottom and the book traces his path back up to goodness/stability/whatever. He is always going "back" to the good life he squandered because he's not really "that guy" blah blah blah. WINTER COUNTS isn't that kind of story.

Virgil Wounded Horse is a tough guy because it's basically his only option. He isn't there because he ruined a good life. He's there because of the elaborate, systemic oppression of the Lakota people on his reservation. By the end of the book you'll be intimately acquainted with life "on the res" and how just getting off of it doesn't actually fix any of the problems. There aren't that many options for Virgil, and law enforcement on the reservation is basically nonexistent, so there's a demand for a vigilante. Especially one who takes some pleasure in inflicting pain on bad guys.

Things get complicated when his ex's father, a politician and one of the few well-off Lakota, asks him to look into an old bully of Virgil's who he says is bringing heroin into the reservation. Virgil is suspicious about it, but when it becomes clear that heroin is actually infiltrating the community, he takes the job.

Virgil is expertly done. He is just as tough as he should be, has real soft spots and vulnerabilities, but isn't much of an optimist. He doesn't make plans for the future but he's no longer a self-destructive alcoholic. He doesn't participate much in the tribal religious practices but he has good reasons for it. He is the guardian to his teenage nephew and worries about him constantly, trying to keep his life stable but also keeping some distance out of fear and doubt.

The plot moves at a pretty steady clip and I particularly enjoyed how there are several parts of the book that don't impact the central mystery at all, just scenes of Virgil living his life, building our understanding of character and setting while never distracting too much from the big plot. (Particularly enjoyed a tangent chapter spent at Casa Bonita, that Denver institution that any kid who grew up within a couple hours of it is intimately familiar with.) The supporting characters really get to grow and develop along with Virgil.

We don't have a lot of crime fiction from authors of color at all, and Indigenous/Native representation is particularly bad so this is a very welcome addition. It gives a fuller and deeper picture of Native life than we typically see in books by white authors that include Native characters. This is gritty enough that I suspect fans of Don Winslow would enjoy it, and I bet readers of Craig Johnson's Longmire series and C. J. Box would like it, too. I actually can't really think of a type of mystery reader I wouldn't recommend it to except those who can't handle violence. There is a decent amount of descriptive violence, much discussion of drug use, and a lot of casual references to pretty terrible crimes happening on the reservation (sexual assault, violence, suicide) though they're generally off the page.

I hope we see a lot more from the author.