Tony Hillerman (1925–2008)

Visiting Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee in the pages of a Hillerman mystery is the next best thing to sleeping under the stars in Navajo country, wondering if there is magic in the sky above.

A Thief of Time has atmosphere to spare, and a complex plot. Leaphorn and Chee are also fleshed out more than usual in this terrific entry. Both men are dealing with personal issues as this mystery begins. Chee hasn't quite figured out how he feels about Mary leaving him because he could not leave his Navajo show more way of life behind, and move to the city with her. He is smitten with a pretty Navajo attorney named Janet, but she's with someone else. Leaphorn, meanwhile, is on terminal leave and retiring after an unexpected death which has hit home.

Neither man can explain Leaphorn's obsession with finding a missing pot hunter named Eleanor Friedman-Bernal. Perhaps Leaphorn is simply distracting himself from the pain. All that is clear is that a Navajo would not be involved; because according to Navajo tradition, stealing pots would make one a Thief of Time.

Chee's allowing a rather large backhoe get stolen right under his nose will have ties to Leaphorn's investigation. Once more the young policeman with an appreciation for the old ways of the Navajo will be investigating with Leaphorn all across the Navajo territory. This one stretches all the way up into Utah, and then down the San Juan River. Leaphorn's recollection of another death will tie-in with Eleanor's disappearance, who was collecting pots made by the mysterious Anasazi. Was something she discovered worth killing for?

Leaphorn and Chee will be hundreds of miles apart when they reach the same conclusion in this quite complex and multi-layered mystery. One will have to race to the other as things turn ugly, and two very different men will find common ground when Leaphorn asks the unexpected of young Chee.

This one is a real gem in this fine series. Hillerman's description of the thousand foot cliffs along the San Juan River at night, and a starry sky filled with Navajo mystery create an unforgettable portrait of the America's Southwest. A terrific read! show less

In The First Eagle, Tony Hillerman once again crafted a fresh and involving entry in his fine series about the Navajo Tribal Police. In this one, the retired Leaphorn is still at loose ends after a tragic death close to home. Chee, meanwhile, has become acting Lieutenant, but is having misgivings over the possibility that it will become permanent. There is a tad less of the Navajo mysticism in this entry, but the vast territory covered by the Navajo Tribal Police is given its due as show more always.

Hillerman dedicated The First Eagle to six officers who had given their lives in defense of their people from the time he wrote his first book until this one. It is only fitting that while keeping true to the Navajo atmosphere always present in the series, good police work and the very real dangers involved for the Tribal Police are brought to the forefront.

Leaphorn is asked to look for the missing Catherine Pollard. His unofficial inquiry will intersect with Chee's investigation into an officer's death. Chee's case is seemingly wrapped up, but may be more complex than it first appeared. Chee is chagrined to discover he is still a little intimidated by Leaphorn, but as the two cases cross paths, they will peel back the veneer and move closer to understanding one another.

This one has everything from poaching eagles to the possibility of the bubonic plague being spread all across the Navajo landscape. Why a pack of prairie dogs are unaffected, and an old Navajo woman who claims to have seen a skinwalker will figure greatly into the exciting conclusion to this one. The ending is also heartfelt for Chee, as his relationship with the pretty lawyer Janet begins to flame out, for she may be Navajo in name only after her time in Washington.

While this entry in the series is a bit different, I highly recommend it. Another fine read in one of the truly great mystery series which has often been copied, but never equaled. show less

This was all Jim Chee, and he spent most of the book prowling the desert alone, defying his boss's orders, trying to solve a mystery that wasn't their jurisdiction, and getting crosswise of the DEA agents whose case it was. Naturally, he was frequently in peril of losing his job, or his life, and it was all terribly convoluted, but much of the action was in Chee's head as he attempted to apply concentration techniques taught to him since childhood by a respected elder. The best parts of this show more book for me were the details of Hopi and Navajo culture (differences abound, and members of the two tribes go about things differently...also, they do not look alike, a point made more than once!), and the fine points of tracking, at which Chee is better than the Feds by several orders of magnitude. For anyone who has watched the excellent Robert Redford/George R. R. Martin production by the same name, featuring Leaphorn, Chee and Manuelito, there is virtually no connection between this particular Hillerman entry and that mini-series. show less

He was so lonely. I think it must be bad to be a Navajo if being lonely bothers you. [168]

Two young teens are missing, one Zuñi and the other Navajo, with strong suspicions that the Zuñi boy was murdered and the Navajo knows how if not by whom. Yet Shalako ceremonies at Zuñi Village will be held in just a few days, when crowds will make investigation difficult and hiding clues easy. Lieutenant Leaphorn makes the rounds of the few places the Navajo boy is known to visit: his family hogan show more and its troubled past; a nearby archaeology dig site; a Franciscan Mission; a hippy commune. Everyone remembers the boy as a "little crazy" but claims not to know where he's gone.

The FBI lead their own investigation and typically, insist on supervising all other law enforcement on the scene. Their approach suggests the missing boys are not a particular motivation, however.

He was finding no order in his thoughts, none of that mild and abstract pleasure which the precise application of logic always brought to him. Instead there was only the discordant clash of improbable against unlikely, effect without cause, action without motive, patternless chaos. Leaphorn's orderly mind found this painful. [74-5]

In this story and the novel before it, Hillerman uses supernatural events as a blind for natural crime. In each case, the perpetrator intended for others to see a mythological interpretation for their behaviour. It will be curious to see if future stories mix it up a bit: criminals not intentionally mimicking supernatural activity, the mythology element overlapping with but not directly connected to the crime, and so forth. And: will there be any scenarios in which the supernatural element is left open to the reader, because irrelevant to the specific solution?

[A]nthropologists have paid scant attention to one of the most basic dimensions of human experience – that close companion of heart and mind, often subdued yet potentially overwhelming, that is known as sense of place. [106]
-- Keith Basso, Wisdom Sits In Places

Hillerman's careful inclusion of landscape references is a key means for acquainting the reader with the lived aspect of Dinetah. Scenes typically include prevailing weather: not merely for scene setting, though it's effective in that way. Immediate conditions are highly relevant to what is happening and what is possible, as evidenced in this story with imminent winter on the high desert and the threat even to seasoned Najavo (never mind a 14-year-old boy alone without food or shelter). In The Blessing Way, territory and climate were relevant both for Leaphorn's immediate need to locate someone hiding in the vast tracts of Dinetah, but also for understanding the ways different people (from different cultures) were likely to see and move through that landscape: other Najavo, military contractors, other indigenous people, city dwellers travelling interstates through reservation lands.

Perhaps even more insightful into the Navajo Way is the land's direct link to Diné stories and values. Places people pass in their daily rounds are the very same places that are featured in their myths and cultural stories. Hillerman regularly notes when events take place near or at these locations, allowing the attentive reader to wonder about the relevance of placenames like Halona or Corn Mountain or Mount Taylor. What is more, these places are shared by other cultures (Hopi, Zuñi, Apache), everyone living among them with slightly different emphases and understanding, and of course, different names. Perhaps similar to Muslim, Christian, and Jewish people living alongside one another in the Middle East, a parallel blend of historical and contemporary.

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This second novel is the first to follow Leaphorn as primary force behind the investigation. While other law enforcement are involved in significant aspects of the larger story bearing on the initial case, Leaphorn is alone in focusing on finding George Bowlegs, the missing Navajo teen. The first novel, by contrast, gave an Anglo anthropologist as much of the drive behind the investigation as it gave Leaphorn. The next significant change won't be for another few novels: when Hillerman introduces the character of Jim Chee.

Again not all Navajo are portrayed as the good guys, here, nor was the primary criminal a Navajo or Zuñi but someone off-reservation. That could become a tiresome scenario if it were to become formulaic. show less