2021; 320 pages. Book 24 (out of 25) in the “Leaphorn, Chee & Manuelito” series. New Author? : No. Genre : Native American Literature; Murder-Mystery; Astronomy. Overall Rating : 7*/10.
It was going to be an easy investigation. The facts were clear-cut. Maya and Steve are divorced; the latter wants
to give it one more try; Maya says no.
Steve gets distraught, drives
out into the desert and shoots himself in the head with his own gun. The firearm is recovered outside the open
driver’s-side window, which makes sense since Steve was left-handed. It’s an obvious suicide, as any detective can
tell. Then things get a bit weird.
While the cops are at police headquarters, wrapping up
the paperwork on case, Maya shows up, confesses to shooting Steve, and refuses
to give any further details about it. Officer
Bernadette “Bernie” Manuelito, who years ago was Maya’s roommate, is asked to
take a closer look at the case.
Then things get even weirder.
What’s To Like...
Although the cover calls this a “Leaphorn,
Chee & Manuelito” novel, the latter does all the investigating here. Leaphorn is now a retired cop, and Chee is busy with a
dual role of being both Bernie’s husband and boss.
As is true of any Hillerman
novel, whether it be by Tony or Anne, Stargazer
is both a murder-mystery and a study of Native American culture. But here, as alluded to by the title, a healthy
dose of astronomy is added, includ9ng both the technological goings-on at a New
Mexico site called the Very Large Array radio telescope (“VLA”), and what
the various star formations such as the Big Dipper, North Star and Milky Way
are called in Navajo, and why.
Anne Hillerman utilizes a lot
of Navajo vocabulary in the story, but the English equivalent is always given the
first time a Native American word is used, and there’s a handy and
comprehensive Navajo/English glossary in the back in case you forget. The Author’s Note, also in the back, is well
worth your reading time, especially if you want to know what’s real
and what’s fictional in the storyline.
And at one point, Joe Leaphorn gives Bernie some practical tips on how
to tell if a person is lying, which I found quite enlightening.
There’s never a dull moment in
Officer Manuelito’s workday. When she
isn’t trying to determine why Maya would give a voluntary but false confession,
Bernie also has to figure out who beat up and tied up Bee, why is some stranger named Ginger
Simons trying to get in touch with her, and the identity of a toddler found dead in the same house as Bee. Lastly and
not leastly, Bernie is assigned to bring in the charming Melvin Shorty on an
FTA charge, which provides a bit of comic relief, as exemplified by one of the excerpts below.
The ending is tense, but I
didn’t find it particularly exciting.
I’m proud to say I had the perpetrator pegged from the beginning, which
is a rarity for me. But that just meant when
perp and cop ended up alone together (is that an
oxymoron?), I could pretty much predict what was about to go down and the
outcome. The last two chapters tie up a
couple loose ends, including Leaphorn’s fear of flying and why Bernie can’t
remember who Ginger is.
Ratings…
Amazon:
4.6/5
based on 7,376 ratings and 438 reviews.
Goodreads: 4.19/5 based on 7,189
ratings and 725 reviews.
Kewlest New Word ...
Bilagáana (n.)
: white man; Caucasian; Anglo (Navajo)
Others: a slew of Navajo words in the text, all covered in the book’s glossary.
Excerpts...
“Mr. Shorty, the courts don’t care about
excuses. You’ve got to go to jail now.”
He put his hands in the pockets of his
overalls. “Call me Mel. Officer Bernadette Manuelito, my wife made
some pumpkin pancakes before she left for her job, and there are three of them
left. They sure are good. Could you use one?”
She shook her head. “We need to leave for Shiprock.”
“What’s the hurry? You sound like a white person.” (loc. 685)
Even though Window Rock was in Arizona, the
Navajo Nation’s capital city received what they called local news from
Albuquerque’s television stations. Most
of the stories concerned fresh crime and ongoing investigations, which, as a
veteran cop, he found riveting. The
reporters ignored the Navajo Nation unless there was an election, a pandemic,
an environmental disaster, a winning high school sports team, or perhaps a
Sasquatch sighting up in the Lukachukai Mountains. (loc. 2752)
Kindle Details…
Stargazer
sells for $8.49 at Amazon right now.
Books 1-18 in the series, written by Anne’s father, Tony Hillerman, are
in the $6.99-$13.49 range.
Anne Hillerman took over writing the series when her father passed away;
Books 19-25 are by her and are in the $6.99-$14.99 price
range. Book 26, The
Way of the Bear, is due out sometime this fall.
“You and I seem to
go together like flies on a cow pie.” (loc.
947)
Stargazer
is admirably sparse in profanity; I noted just one “ass” in the entire book. I am always impressed by authors who use their literary skills to set the tone of a story instead of resorting to excessive profanity.
There is an underlying examination of the abuse of women throughout the storyline, which apparently occurs all too frequently in Native American society. A couple reviewers took exception to the inclusion of this topic, but I will trust Anne Hillerman’s assertion that it is a major problem on reservations, and am happy she turns the spotlight on it.
My biggest issue with Stargazer
was the plethora of irrelevant storylines. I kept waiting for the Bee and Ginger and
Melvin and Leaphorn’s fear-of-flying tangents to tie into the main plot thread
in some clever fashion. But they never
did. Which made them feel like just potholes
in the path of the investigation.
This doesn’t mean Stargazer
is a poor book. On at least three
counts—Astronomy, Women’s Rights, and Native American culture—it is a
noteworthy effort. And the
Murder-Mystery aspect, isn’t bad either; it just wanders off a bit too much for my reading tastes.
7 Stars. My favorite Navajo expression in Stargazer was the oft-used Yá’át’ééh, which the glossary notes can mean “hello” or “it is good”, and yes it takes four accent marks and two apostrophes to spell that precisely. I learned the word many years ago from an Apache friend, and it comprises 50% of my Native American vocabulary. The other half is an Apache insult that is said to be the worst slam you can give to a Native American, and is guaranteed to start a fight in any bar. We’ll refrain from detailing it here.
