As a longtime fan of Tony Hillerman's mystery series involving Navajo policemen Joe Leaphorn, Jim Chee, and now Bernie Manuelito, I picked this one up based purely on name recognition. As I read the book, however, I began to wonder if it had actually been written by Hillerman.
The plot involves Washington, D.C. politicos involved in drug-running between Mexico and the U.S. There is some soap-boxing about missing royalties owed Native American tribes from the U.S. government, and a couple honorable assassins thrown in to spice things up.
The setup is interesting enough, with a man sent out to the Four Corners region to do some investigating, shot in the back, and then a follow-up investigation by Sgt. Jim Chee. Meanwhile, Chee's would-be girlfriend has become Border Patrol Officer Manuelito down in the bootheel of New Mexico. In fact, most of the action in the story is done by Bernie, although Leaphorn figures out most of the details with his powers of deduction and a couple maps. Chee just kind of ties things together.
What disappointed me is that although the characters are moving along, the spirit seems to have gone out of Hillerman's writing. The vivid details of the landscape and geography are missing, along with the spirituality of Chee. Most of the Navajo cultural notes that made the earlier novels interesting are just kind of hinted at and it is assumed that the reader has read the other works. If this was the first Hillerman mystery I picked up, I would probably skip the rest.
As a longtime fan of Tony Hillerman's mystery series involving Navajo policemen Joe Leaphorn, Jim Chee, and now Bernie Manuelito, I picked this one up based purely on name recognition. As I read the book, however, I began to wonder if it had actually been written by Hillerman. The plot involves Washington, D. C. politicos involved in drug-running between Mexico and the U. S. There is some soap-boxing about missing royalties owed Native American tribes from the U. S. government, and a couple honorable assassins thrown in to spice things up. The setup is interesting enough, with a man sent out to the Four Corners region to do some investigating, shot in the back, and then a follow-up investigation by Sgt. Jim Chee. Meanwhile, Chee's would-be girlfriend has become Border Patrol Officer Manuelito down in the bootheel of New Mexico. In fact, most of the action in the story is done by Bernie, although Leaphorn figures out most of the details with his powers of deduction and a couple maps. Chee just kind of ties things together. What disappointed me is that although the characters are moving along, the spirit seems to have gone out of Hillerman's writing. The vivid details of the landscape and geography are missing, along with the spirituality of Chee. Most of the Navajo cultural notes that made the earlier novels interesting are just kind of hinted at and it is assumed that the reader has read the other works. If this was the first Hillerman mystery I picked up, I would probably skip the rest.