Spider Woman's Daughter - Anne Hillerman

    2013; 416 pages.  New Author? : Yes, but she’s Tony Hillerman’s daughter, and I’ve read his books.  Book #19 (out of 22) in the “Leaphorn and Chee (and Manuelito)” series.  Genre : Murder-Mystery; Native American Fiction.  Laurels : Winner of the 2014 Spur Award for Best First Novel from the Western Writers of America; New York Times Best Seller list.  Overall Rating : 7½*/10.

    Someone has just shot retired Navajo Police Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn!  Right there in the parking lot of the Navajo Inn in Window Rock, Arizona, as he walked to his car after a breakfast with several of his former police colleagues.

    Who would want to do such a thing?  After all, he’s retired now.  Most likely it’s someone he helped put away in prison years ago.  If that’s the case, the list of suspects may be pretty long.  Or maybe it has to do with some job he’s working on at present.  He still does consulting work as a freelance investigator.

    It certainly wasn’t an accident.  The perpetrator jumped out of a blue car with Arizona license plates, pulled a gun, plugged Leaphorn right in the head, then jumped back in the car and sped away.  We know all this because Officer Bernadette “Bernie” Manuelito watched the whole thing unfold from the restaurant’s lobby.

    That bit of serendipity may have saved Leaphorn’s life for now.  But it might only be temporary, since the Window Rock medical facilities are not equipped for the immediate surgery and follow-up intensive care that Leaphorn desperately needs.

    But we may be overthinking all this.  Leaphorn’s live-in girlfriend, Louisa Bourebonette, recently left town after a spat with him, reportedly heading for Houston.

    And she’s not taking phone calls, and not making her present whereabouts available to anyone.

What’s To Like...

    Spider Woman’s Daughter is the 19^th book in Tony Hillerman’s “Leaphorn and Chee” series, and the first one to be written and published after he passed away, with his daughter, Anne Hillerman, taking over as author.  I’ve read four of Tony’s books, and I was curious to see how closely Anne would stay true to the style, content, and storytelling of her father.

   The action starts off right away.  Leaphorn gets shot in the first couple pages, and the fact that his fellow police officers were at the scene when it happened means the hunt is on almost immediately.  As always in this series, the setting for the book is the Four Corners area of the US Southwest, with a lot of the events taking place in Window Rock, Arizona, and Shiprock, Santa Fe, and Albuquerque, New Mexico.

    The main storyline of course is trying to figure out who shot Joe Leaphorn and why.  But there are a bunch of secondary threads as well.  Why are Jackson and Nez so hard to locate?  What is Louisa hiding?  How the heck does the cat tie in with things?  And how does AIRC (the “American Indian Resource Center”) fit into all this?

     I enjoyed the various Navajo phrases that are scattered throughout the book.  “Yah Ta Hey”, I’m familiar with from my college days.  Here there was also the greeting  “Ya’ at’ eeh”, which I presume is a variant of Yah Ta Hey; Diné (“the People”); “hataalii” (a medicine man); “bilagaana” (anyone who is non-Navajo), and several others.  I’ve skipped most of the accent marks in these words.

    It was fun to learn about Hosteen Klah, a famous Navajo artist, weaver, and medicine man that I’d never heard of.  Wikipedia has a page devoted to him, which helped enlighten me.  And I enjoyed sitting in on the healing ceremony that takes place at the hospital for Joe Leaphorn.

    Since I live in Arizona, the reference to the local grocery chain called Basha’s brings back memories, since I'm pretty sure it’s no longer around.  The musical nods to Bruno Mars and Janis Joplin were also neat, although it appears the author is not a big fan of the latter.  And when it’s hot here in Arizona, you really don’t want to mess with other people’s Fudgsicles.

    The 416 pages are divided up into 22 chapters.  Spider Woman’s Daughter is both a standalone novel and a part of a 22-book series.

Excerpts...

    “He shares his house with a lady friend, Louisa.”

    Cordova raised his eyebrows.

    “Louisa Bourebonette.”

    “Bourebonette?  A French Navajo?”

    “Not Navajo,” Bernie said.  “She’s a white woman, an anthropologist.”  Bernie thought of the old joke from Anthro 101: Every Navajo family includes Mom, Dad, four kids, and an anthropologist.  (loc. 203)

    “Isn’t this a new visitor center?”

    “It opened a few years ago.  The old building you remember had to be razed.”

    “Old?  Wasn’t it built in the late nineteen-fifties?”

    “Ironic, isn’t it?  Modern America couldn’t build a visitor center to last seventy years,” Stephen said.  “These Pueblo buildings still stand after more than a thousand.  But this time we did it right.  We brought in an Indian to bless the site.”  (loc. 2923)

Kindle Details...

    Spider Woman’s Daughter sells for $9.99 at Amazon, which is the same price you’d pay for the second and third books that she’s written in this series.  Her fourth and latest book, Cave of Bones, sells for $12.99, and was released last April.

“Life is full of if-onlys.”  (loc. 186)

    The ending has its pluses and minuses.  On the positive side, it’s suitably exciting, with a couple of red herrings to keep you on your toes.  Some parts of it are a bit over-the-top, but that just enhances the thrills and spills.

    On the down side, the perpetrator really needs to watch the Austin Powers movies and learn from them.  When you’ve captured the hero police detectives that have been chasing you, just shoot them already.  And if you’re not going to do that, at least don’t explain to them WHY you did it, and HOW you pulled it off.  Because, in the overwhelmingly likely event that they do escape the diabolical death trap you've created for them, prosecuting you will be an incredibly easy task.

    I call that last part a “Perry Mason” ending if you’ve ever read or watched that Erle Stanley Gardner series.  In fairness, it should be noted that Tony Hillerman routinely used that literary device as well.  It isn’t very realistic, but it does tie up plot threads efficiently.

    7½ Stars.  If you’ve loved Tony Hillerman’s books in this series and are worried about someone taking over the writing task, I have good news for you.  The transition from father to daughter in the authorship is smooth and seamless.  There’s no drop-off in the quality of the writing and little change in the style as Anne Hillerman takes up the pen.  I get the impression that Joe Leaphorn is being gradually phased out and replaced by Bernie Manuelito, but this started when Tony was still writing the stories.  About the only time I sensed a different author was when an entire page was devoted to Bernie musing about how her marriage to Jim Chee was being strained by both of them working on the Navajo Police Force.

    No male author would take that much time to write about that.  Which does not necessarily make it a bad thing.

Skeleton Man - Tony Hillerman

   2004; 336 pages.  Book #17 (out of 18) in the “Leaphorn and Chee” series.  New Author? : No.  Genre : Crime Mystery; Native American Fiction.  Overall Rating : 7*/10.

    Billy Tuve has come unstuck in time.  No, he doesn’t pop in up and down his life line, like Billy Pilgrim did.  But time itself has very little meaning to Billy.  “A while ago” can mean two hours or ten years to him.

    Billy might consider sharpening those chronology skills though, since he’s just become the prime suspect in a cold case from a couple years ago, where a trading post owner was reportedly killed and the owner’s wife claimed a valuable white diamond was stolen from the premises.  It was estimated to be worth $20,000 dollars or more.

    Billy's been caught trying to pawn off just such a diamond for a paltry $20.  Coincidence?  Former Navajo Tribal Police Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn has his doubts.

    Billy’s alibi is even more dubious.  He claims a strange old Indian man, a shaman, appeared on a path he was walking one night, and offered Billy the diamond in exchange for his shovel.  Billy may be unstuck in time, but he’s no fool.  It was obvious even to him that the proffered “diamond” had to be a fake.  Still, even a zircon is worth more than a shovel.

    But maybe that old Indian was really Skeleton Man is disguise.  Testing Billy in some sort of way.  Nah, that’s impossible.

    Or is it?

What’s To Like...

    Despite the titular reference to a Native American deity, the backdrop of Skeleton Man actually stems from a real event – the 1956 mid-air crash of two commercial airplanes over the Grand Canyon, with all 128 lives lost.  Tony Hillerman discusses this in a kewl Author’s Note at the front of the book, so this isn’t a spoiler.

    This isn’t really a Murder-Mystery, which is a bit odd for a Leaphorn-Chee tale, and the cold-case robbery mentioned above never gets solved, which I also found unusual.  The book starts out weird; Chapter One is more or less an epilogue, which introduces the reader to a whole slew of new characters in slam-bang fashion.  To boot, the plotline isn’t always chronological; occasionally it doubles back upon itself.  But that’s okay, it keeps the reader on his/her toes.

    There were enough plot twists to keep my attention.  Just because a character is a “white-hat” doesn’t mean they aren’t capable of unprovoked assault.  And while we know we can safely assume that Skeleton Man isn’t a divine visitation, the reader, along with Chee and Leaphorn, still has to come up with an explanation of his alleged appearance.

    Skeleton Man was an incredibly fast read for me, so if you have a book report due tomorrow, this book’s your saving grace.  I liked the “Waiting For Godot” reference (see excerpt, below); it brought back memories of debating with my college English Lit professor whether reading it was a complete waste of my time.  I have since changed my viewpoint on this.  I also learned what a “skip tracer” is, a term that I’d never heard of before, but which has a straightforward meaning.

    The real joy of any Tony Hillerman story is the insight that one gains into Native American culture.  The biggest piece of enlightenment I gained here was that it’s not just us white folks that are excluded from a given tribe’s sacred rituals and lore.  If you’re a Hopi in among Navajos, you’ll be similarly excluded.  And even if you’re all Navajos, but you come from a different clan, you will be shut out of certain ceremonies.  This is the stuff I read Ton Hillerman for.

Excerpts...

    “Bernie, you wait here.  If Tuve shows up, keep him here until Cowboy and I get back.”

    “Sergeant Chee,” Bernie said, loud enough to be heard over the roar of the river and the clamor of the mating-season frogs, and maybe even a little louder than that.  “I want to remind you that I am no longer Officer B. Manuelito of your Navajo Tribal Police squad.  I am a private regular citizen.”

    “Sorry,” Chee said, sounding suitably repentant.  “I just thought-“

    “Okay.  I’ll stay here,” Bernie said.  Dashee was grinning at her.  (pg. 222)

    The big blond man had his back turned toward her now, looking the other way, apparently studying the higher reaches of the Salt Trail.  Waiting for Tuve, she guessed.  And that thought reminded her of Waiting for Godot and the time they had wasted in her Literature 411 class discussing whether Godot would ever arrive, and what difference it would make if he did.  And now wasn’t she sort of a perfect match for Beckett’s ridiculous characters?  (pg. 236)

“Billy’s always been very vague about chronology.  Ever since that horse fell on him.”  (pg. 138 )

    Skeleton Man has some flaws.  The first 2/3 of the book drags in places, and it takes Leaphorn and Chee a mind-numbingly long time to check out the Skeleton Man angle to Billy’s story.  The excitement picks up strikingly in the last third of the book, though, which is a nice reward for those readers who stuck things out.

    Still, the ending felt contrived, with not just one, but two deus ex machinas showing up.  (Note: yeah, I know that plural is not grammatically correct; if you saw my junior high school Latin grades, you’ll know why I don’t care.)  One is a providential character named Mary, the other is more Mother Nature-begotten.  While they both move the plotline along, they really telegraph the ending.

    Also, the final resolution of the Skeleton Man character was anticlimactic.  I think I could’ve come up with a more satisfying way to tie that thread up, and I don’t call myself as writer.

    7 Stars.  Skeleton Man is still a worthwhile read, especially for the Native American cultural details, and that's the main reason I read Tony Hillerman's books.  But I’d be amazed if anyone ever said it was the best offering in the series.

Coyote Waits - Tony Hillerman

    1990; 368 pages.  New Author? : No.  Book #10 (out of 18) in the “Leaphorn and Chee” series.  Genre : Murder-Mystery; Native American Fiction; Police Procedural.  Laurels : Winner of the 1991 Nero Award.  Overall Rating : 8*/10.

    It’s something that will haunt Officer Jim Chee for the rest of his life.

    Fellow Tribal Officer Delbert Nez radioed him to tell him he was about to catch the pesky graffiti artist who had recently started dabbing the nearby sacred mountains with white paint.  The radio transmissions were patchy – which was nothing unusual in among all the mountains in the area.  But Nez sounded relaxed, and even chuckling as he told Chee he’d be a couple minutes late for their nightly rendezvous at the local coffee shop.

    But when “a couple minutes” started stretching out to a much longer time, Chee realized he should’ve immediately have supplied back-up for Nez, despite the vandalism seeming to be a minor misdemeanor.  And when he belatedly tore down the dark road, all his fears became nightmares when he came across Nez’s police car, in flames, with Nez still in the driver’s seat, dead from a gunshot.

    Why would some petty paint-sprayer resort to killing to avoid arrest?

What’s To Like...

    Coyote Waits is my third “Leaphorn and Chee” novel, the first since 2014.  It has the usual Tony Hillerman literary structure: a mystifying murder on the Navajo reservation, and a methodical investigation by the two Native American policemen, in this case, working separately for most of the book.   Indeed, in this story, they don’t think too highly of one another, their limit apparently being grudging respect.  Chee is still heavily into “the Navajo way” (he wants to become a shaman), Leaphorn has long since dismissed the tribal mysticism as a bunch of hooey. 

    The murder-mystery is well-crafted.  The reader rides along as both investigators gradually find clues as to who did it, and why.  There are an adequate number of twists and red herrings, yet everything unfolds in a sensible order.

    As usual, the story takes place in the Four Corners area of the US, and I was happy to see one of my alma maters – Arizona State – get a brief mention.  Also as usual, the reader learns Navajo words (“Ya’eh t’eeh!”), Navajo culture, and the Navajo mindset, as well as some entertaining interplay between mystical forces and cold, hard evidence.  This is true for all of the books in the series, and that’s a real treat.

    It was also fun to once again cross paths with the titular Coyote god.  The trickster was also featured in books by Christopher Moore (reviewed here) and Kage Baker (reviewed here).  Things are never what they seem when he’s around.  The storyline moves at a nice, jaunty pace, and this was a quick read for me, which was just what I wanted.

Excerpts...

    “I haven’t brought up the subject of snakes,” Janet said.  She was brushing the dirt from her hands on her pant legs.  “If I do, I hope you’ll try to say something positive.”

    Okay,” Chee said.  He thought for a minute, catching his breath.  “If you like snakes, this is a fine example of the places you come to find them.”  (loc. 916)

    Pinto’s eyes moved across the courtroom, hesitating a moment when they came to the Navajo panelist, hesitating another moment when they met the eyes of Jim Chee.

    Chee looked away, down at his itching hand.

    No one knew Hosteen Ashie Pinto.  The whites didn’t know him, nor the Hispanics, nor the Apache, nor the Pueblos, nor the Asian.  Nor Janet Pete, nor me.  He is a shaman.  He is a stranger to us all.  (loc. 2309)

Kindle Details...

    Coyote Waits sells for $8.99 at Amazon, which, coincidentally, is the same price you’d pay for the paperback version there.  The rest of the e-books in the series are all in the $4.99-$9.99 range, with the majority of them going for $8.99.

“Things seem random only because we see them from the wrong perspective.”  (loc. 2239)

    There are a couple quibbles.  At one point, a(nother) shooting victim takes time, while dying, to write not one, but two quick messages in his own blood on the wall.  Shades of Sherlock Holmes!  But I find it hard to believe that’s what I’d be doing with my final breaths.

    Equally vexing was what I call the “Perry Mason” ending.  Chee has finally figured out the who-and-why, but frankly, he doesn’t have a shred of proof.  How convenient, then, when the perpetrator fully confesses to the crime without any coercion whatsoever.

    Lastly, and leastly, there are a slew of extra “goodies” at the end of the book, taking up the final 13% of the Kindle, none of which are worth spending any time on.  Most are just plugs for the other books in the series.

    8 Stars.  The quibbles notwithstanding, this was still a very good book.  Add ½ star if you enjoy learning more about the Navajo way of life.

The Ghostway - Tony Hillerman

   1984; 301 pages. New Author? : No.  Book #6 (out of 18) of the “Leaphorn and Chee” series.  Genre : Murder-Mystery.  Overall Rating : 8½*/10.

    There’s been a shootout at the OK Corral.  No, it actually took place at the Shiprock Economy Wash-O-Mat laundry on the Navajo Four Corners reservation.  One gunman was killed; the other was wounded before driving away.  Curiously, neither was a local; they were both small-time criminals from Los Angeles. 

    Why would two Angelinos drive all the way to Shiprock to shoot at each other?  And why was one of them, a Navajo by blood, asking around about his brother?  Tribal policeman Jim Chee has a number of questions, but no answers.  And for some reason, the FBI is doing their best to keep him in the dark.

What’s To Like...

     Tony Hillerman novels are almost always Murder-Mysteries steeped in Navajo culture, and The Ghostway is no exception.  The Crime portion of the storyline is well-done.  The clues are there, you and Jim Chee just have to fathom them out.  Hillerman does a nice job of gradually revealing more and more of what’s really going on.  The ending is logical, without being too simple or obvious.  And naturally, it can’t be solved without delving into the Navajo way of life.

    The Navajo culture immersion part of the story is done with an equally deft stroke.  Its comparison to the “White Way” is presented objectively.  On one hand, staying on the reservation means a meager existence filled with superstition.  On the other, a move to a place like LA means a loss of one’s heritage, and a bewildering culture with its own drawbacks.  At one point, Chee stands at the fence of an old folks home, questioning its residents, and reflecting that whites deal with their aged kinfolk by institutionalizing them, while Navajos revere and honor their elders.  It's a powerful scene.

    The series has an overlying theme of Jim Chee struggling to bring his Indian heritage into harmony with Anglo civilization, his job, and his white girlfriend.  But The Ghostway, like all the books in the series, is a standalone novel.

Kewlest New Word. . .

Chindi (n.)  :  The ghost left behind after a person dies, being everything that was bad about that person; the residue that a person has been unable the bring into universal harmony (Navajo religious belief).

Excerpts...

    “Begay is Tazhii Dinee.  In fact, I’m told his aunt is the ahnii of that clan.  He’s lived up there above Two Gray Hills longer than anybody can remember.  Has a grazing permit.  Runs sheep.  Keeps to himself.  Some talk that he’s a witch.”

    Largo recited it all in a flat, uninflected voice, putting no more emphasis on the last sentence than the first.

    “There’s some talk that just about everybody is a witch,” Chee said.  “I’ve heard you were.  And me.”  (pg. 35)

    Maybe he hadn’t stepped through the corpse hole into a chindi Hogan.  Maybe he wasn’t contaminated with ghost sickness.  But that didn’t matter either.  The ghost sickness came when he made the step – out of hozro and into the darkness.  Out of being a Navajo, into being a white man.  For Chee, that was where the sickness lay.  (pg. 244)

“Let the whites bury the whites, or however that quotation went.  (pg.  19)

    I read my first Tony Hillerman novel back in 2008, shortly after he passed away.  It is reviewed here.  I don’t know why it's taken me so long to pick up another one of his books.  I very much enjoyed The Ghostway. 

    My only quibble is with Jim Chee repeatedly moping about his GF’s trying to get him to leave the reservation and take a job with the Feds.  Do or do not, Jim Chee.  Make a decision, lose your funk, and move on.

    8½ Stars.  Add one star if you have some or all Native American blood flowing through your veins.

A Thief of Time - Tony Hillerman

1988; 325 pages. Genre : Murder Mystery. Made into a movie for the PBS series Mystery!. Overall Rating : B-.

   .An anthropologist vanishes among Anasazi ruins. A flatbed trailer and backhoe are stolen. Three murders rock the remote 4-Corners area of the Southwest. Navajo Tribal police lieutenant Joe Leaphorn and officer Jim Chee have to find the connection in all this, find the killer(s), and find the missing anthropologist.
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What's To Like...
    The list of suspects are all "gray"; none jump out as the obvious bad guys. The solving of the case comes from dogged and determined detective work, not from some too-good-to-be-true stroke of luck.
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Hillerman uses real-world settings, usually in the Native American regions in the Southwest. Since I live in Phoenix, this was a close-to-home story. He also focuses heavily on the daily lives of the Native Americans, and their sturggle to maintain their cultural identity. Chee and Leaphorn are a nice study in contrasts. Leaphorn is modernized - Navajo traditions don't bother him, and he doesn't believe in witches. Chee is a "singer" - kind of a junior shaman for his clan. Finding bodies calls for a ritualistic cleansing just as soon as the policework is done.

   .That being said, there is a bit too much emphasis on the cultural issues here. A bit more time might have been spent on smoothing out the storyline. The ending seems contrived and just a bit abrupt. Oh yeah, and we have yet another burnt-out cop here (Leaphorn). Is it too much to ask just once to have the main cop be well-adjusted and happy to go to work each day?

On writing Murder-Mysteries...
    I have a feeling this is a tough genre to write. Somebody gets killed early on. Somebody else spends most of the book searching for clues and trying not to be offed or fired as he/she closes in on solving the case. At the end, there needs to be an exciting climax, with the perpetrators getting their just desserts. There's not much room for variation in this format, and how many thousands of murder-mystery books are there out there?
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Adieu, Tony Hillerman...
    Tony Hillerman put his unique stamp on the murder-mystery format by imbuing his books with a heavy dose of Southwestern Native American history & culture. I've read that among the Hopis, Navajos, etc., he is held in high esteem for this. Tony Hillerman passed away last October 26, at the age of 83. While I'm not a big fan of this genre, it seemed appropriate to read one of his books.