Very good Chee/Leaphorn mystery about the murder of a Navajo policeman and a connection to finding Butch Cassidy's grave or body. Read this just before watching same story on PBS Mystery

Landscape and realism great as usual, realism of the law enforcement officers ( )

Idly rummaging through some used books on the salvaged table at the village recycling station, the cover of this book caught my eye. Seeing it was one of Tony Hillerman's books, I began thumbing through it and recognized the book as one of the Joe Leaphorn / Jim Chee Navajo Tribal Police series I'd read (likely in the 1990s).

Academics, murderous villainy, rattlesnakes, skinwalkers, and even Butch Cassidy all mix in the twists of this tale. Coyote is a trickster in much of Native American myth, and Coyote's imposed fate plays a guiding role in the solution of this plot's puzzle. 'Gently impressive mystery fiction' is the best phrase I've come across to describe Tony Hillerman's writing.

I've found Tony Hillerman's books an enjoyable pastime over the years, and having spent a little time in the Four Corners region could easily visualize the settings. ( )

Landscape and realism great as usual, but killing off Delbert Nez felt awkward,
as did the oddly paced Vietnamese sequences, making the mystery tough to follow. ( )

Chee & Leaphorn and historian seeking evidence of Butch Cassidy