The novels were adapted into Longmire, a crime drama television series which premiered in 2012 and was developed by John Coveny and Hunt Baldwin.
[1] Longmire attended the University of Southern California, where he played offensive lineman for the USC Trojans and graduated with a degree in English literature.
He was assigned to the 1st Marine Division as a military police officer, and served in country at Tan Son Nhut Air Base during the Vietnam War.
He investigates the murders of two white teenagers who had been found guilty, but not severely punished, for raping a local Indian girl, Melissa Little Bird.
[8] In The Dark Horse, Walt goes undercover as an insurance investigator from Billings, Montana, in Campbell County, Wyoming (at the unofficial request of the Campbell County Sheriff), to determine if a woman truly murdered her husband, a man with a dubious past and a gift for making enemies, after he allegedly burned down their barn and killed their horses for the insurance money.
In As the Crow Flies, Walt assists the newly appointed chief of the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation Tribal Police, Iraq War veteran Lolo Long, with the investigation into the death of a young woman who fell from a cliff with her child in her arms, while simultaneously preparing for Cady's wedding.
[11] In A Serpent's Tooth, Walt deals with a multi-state polygamous cult when he tries to help a Mormon "lost boy" that leads to Big Oil, the Central Intelligence Agency, and a Mexican drug cartel, which ultimately costs the life of one of his deputies and the grievous injury of another.
[12] In Spirit of Steamboat, Walt flashes back to Christmas Eve 1988 (during his second month as sheriff) when he helps Lucian and a World War II veteran of the 38th Bombardment Group transport an injured girl (the sole survivor of a car accident) from Durant to Denver during a snowstorm in a decommissioned North American B-25 Mitchell.
[4] In Dry Bones, Walt deals with the discovery of a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton on Native American land within his county and the subsequent death of the property's owner, resulting in a joint investigation with the FBI under the scrutiny of the newly announced deputy United States attorney for the district of Wyoming.
The two eloped and were married by a justice of the peace in Miles City, Montana, when her father refused to pay for a big church wedding.
They have been friends since they were 12 years old, and both served in Vietnam (although Henry was a member of the United States Army Special Forces, while Walt was a Marine MP), where they were both highly decorated.
[3] The two continue their relationship after returning to Durant; in A Serpent's Tooth, Walt learns from the doctor that Vic was pregnant, but lost the baby after being stabbed during the confrontation with Tomás Bidarte.
As the series starts in 2012, Walt is slowly coming out of a deep grieving period where he delegated most of the day-to-day police duties to Deputies Branch Connally (Bailey Chase), Archie "The Ferg" Ferguson (Adam Bartley), and Victoria "Vic" Moretti (Katee Sackhoff).
He does not own a cell phone (although he will on numerous occasions borrow one from his deputies or Henry) and takes his calls on a land line at home or in the office, or over the radio in his vehicle.
Although Walt let everybody (including Cady) assume it was the cancer that took her life, Martha was murdered in an apparent mugging in Denver, Colorado, by a man named Miller Beck.
[25] In "Highway Robbery", Walt asks out Dr. Donna Sue Monaghan (Ally Walker), a psychiatrist who works for the VA in Sheridan, Wyoming.
Shortly before the show's timeline begins, Walt hired Vic Moretti, a former Philadelphia PD homicide detective, as a deputy sheriff.
In addition, Deputy Sheriff Eamonn O'Neill was on loan from Cumberland County to assist the office when both Walt and Branch were otherwise occupied, leaving Vic to run day-to-day affairs.
Although she was diagnosed with the disease, in the TV series she was murdered, and the associated details are slowly revealed over several seasons, significantly affecting Walt's relationships with his deputy Branch and the Connally family.
Instead, the TV series has Walt slowly recovering from losing his wife, unable or unwilling to maintain a relationship with a woman called Lizzie Ambrose, before finally showing enough interest in a member of the opposite sex to actively court Dr. Donna Sue Monaghan.