Virgil Wounded Horse is the local enforcer on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota.  When justice is denied by the American legal system or the tribal council, Virgil is hired to deliver his own punishment, the kind that’s hard to forget. But when heroin makes its way into the reservation and finds Virgil’s nephew, his vigilantism suddenly becomes personal. He enlists the help of his ex-girlfriend and sets out to learn where the drugs are coming from, and how to make them stop.

They follow a lead to Denver and find that drug cartels are rapidly expanding and forming new and terrifying alliances. And back on the reservation, a new tribal council initiative raises uncomfortable questions about money and power. As Virgil starts to link the pieces together, he must face his own demons and reclaim his Native identity. He realizes that being a Native American in the twenty-first century comes at an incredible cost.

I’ve probably mentioned it here in passing a couple times, but I’ve been reading more than one book at a time for the last little while. Sometimes…oof, sometimes too many? Maybe? Like, sometimes as many as five or six at once? And…I’ve got a system, and it makes sense to me, so I’m going to keep rolling with it. But one of the things I’ve been trying/hoping to do is read more crime fiction & thrillers!

WINTER COUNTS is the debut novel by David Heska Wanbli Weiden, and I sure hope this is the beginning of a new series, because it has all the making of an absolutely killer crime fiction series. This was just so goddamn good!

WINTER COUNTS tells the story of Virgil Wounded Horse, a member of the Lakota tribe who lives on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Virgil acts as an enforcer on the reservation, getting justice for people when the American criminal justice system repeatedly fails to do so. I hope it won’t come off as spoilery, but I feel it’s worth mentioning that in the afterward of the book, Weiden notes that the job of enforcer on the reservation is very much a real thing, which I would not have otherwise known. Knowing that also really ratchets up the intensity of the story!

Virgil is also the legal guardian of his teenage nephew, Nathan. Nathan gets a bit mixed up with the wrong crowd, which leads Virgil to discover that heroin is making its way on to the reservation. The plot mainly centers around Virgil trying to figure out who is responsible for bringing heroin on to the reservation, but his investigation points to a much larger conspiracy. With the help of his kinda-ex-kinda-not-ex girlfriend, Marie Short Bear, he begins unraveling threads that lead to some disturbing discoveries. Dark times follow.

Very. Dark. Times.

Oof. There are some absolutely haunting passages in WINTER COUNTS, and some moments of extreme violence. Virgil is not like a cookie cutter tough guy by any stretch of the imagination, but he is also someone you do not want to cross. I think what really drives this story forward is the personal demons that Virgil has fought and continues to fight. He somewhat openly rejects some of the traditional aspects of his culture, and getting him to engage more with those becomes a focus for Marie.

This is an outstanding debut, and a book that brings something new and exciting to the crime fiction world. Whether there are more Virgil Wounded Horse books in the works or not, David Heska Wanbli Weiden is an author I’m looking forward to reading more from in the future!

Huge thanks to Ecco Books for sending a copy my way!!