Anne Hillerman is, to quote her bio in this novel, ‘an award-winning reporter, the author of several nonfiction books, and the daughter of New York Times bestselling mystery author Tony Hillerman. She lives in Santa Fe. This is her first novel.’ One of her non- fiction books is Tony Hillerman’s Landscape: On the Road with Chee and Leaphorn. Her central character here in her debut novel is Bernadette Manuelito who is a minor character in her father’s Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee Navaho Tribal Police mystery series being the wife of the latter.
She’s actually a better writer than her father was with more grace, more certainty in her story writing than her father ever had. It’s not that he was a bad writer so much as he wasn’t a great writer despite being a successful writer with many novels to his name. His nearest comparison as a mystery writer would be Robert Parker with her nearest comparison being John Lee Burke.
To those of us who aren’t from the Southwest or deeply familiar with the Navaho culture, the work of her and of her father have a otherness to them which, at least to me, is quite fascinating. By setting her series (there are two novels so far in this series) where her father set his series, I assume she hoped to tap in the pool of his readers.
The mystery is who shot Jim Chee’s former partner, Joe Leaphorn, while Manuelito watched in horror from inside a café where she’s meeting with other police officers for breakfast. Leaphorn is shot in the head but not killed and is transported to a hospital. Her commanding officer does not put on the case but her husband naturally keeps her involved in the case.
Hilllerman does a nice job of being faithful to the characters and setting her father created for his series while giving both Manuelito and her husband an added depth that adds a lot to the story. As this is her first work of fiction, I am very impressed at her writing skill as demonstrated here.
The mystery itself is well-thought out and wrapped-up rather well. It certainly bodes well for all future novels in this series. Yeah I’m not giving anything away, so you too can see this mystery without knowing what’s going to happen based on what I say.
HarperCollins, 2013
