Skeleton Man

Sergeant Jim Chee and the Legendary Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn are like old friends I grow more comfortable with and fond of with each story. As always with Hillerman, the tale is well told, the plot is tight, and the author's love and appreciation for Native Americans--and their cultures and the land to which they are conneced--shines through. The twist here is a realistic and enchanting adventure down the Grand Canyon. It's my favorite so far.

Tony Hillerman is another author who has the knack of writing a series of novels over a long period of time and almost every one is a gem. Choosing to use the Arizona reservation life of the Navaho and Hopi people as the setting for his detective stories. Writing in an unassuming style of the adventures of Sargeant Jim Chee and Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn, the tales build on legends, customs, and the people themselves, Hillerman has created a whole genre of mystery stories that has kept readers entertained for decades, Skeleton Man blends the sudden appearance of long lost diamonds, an almost legendary plane crash, and tales of a shaman living in the Grand Canyon together. Jim Chee helps a friend to defend a relative who is suspected of murder after appearing in a trading post trying to pawn a $20,000 diamond. The diamond stories recall the story to one of the first major plane crashes in US history. And the plane crash becomes the basis for a more modern story of greed and dishonesty. And everything will bring us back to the Grand Canyon, where all the seekers come to find the truth. Providing some comic relief, and a great deal of human interest is the quirky relationship between Jim Chee and Bernie Manuelito. Regular readers will know that these to have been on an off for several volumes, but now they are engaged. Trying to keep their professional lives separate from their romantic efforts lead to many wry moments. Both are sympathetic characters and richly deserve each other. Skeleton Man is a mystery that is pretty much solved long before the end, and so is more of an adventure story than a complicated whodunit. It's not quite a cozy, but definitely is comfortable reading. And Hillerman's blending of Indian culture and detective novel is often an easy way to discover things about the Navaho and Hopi that makes them more real to those of us who lived in the sheltered confines of large cities. Hillerman stories pretty much stand on their own, so while knowing the series deepens what one finds, it isn't necessary to read them in a particular order. Dive in where you will and expect to enjoy yourself.

Winner of the Edgar's Grandmaster award years ago, Hillerman continues to create novels that are as much about the tenor of modern Navajo life amid the rugged, remote beauty of the high desert country as they are about solving crimes. This one begins with retired Lt. Joe Leaphorn's retrospective musing on how the "complicated happening below the Salt woman Shrine illustrated his Navajo belief in universal connections." The narrative then drops back to allow the story to converge from several viewpoints. A jewelry store robbery has been committed and the owner killed. A simple-minded Hopi man, Billy Tuve, is arrested for the crime after trying to pawn a $20 thousand diamond for $20. He sticks to the unlikely story that the diamond was given him by some anonymous old man at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Tribal Sgt. Jim Chee enters the fray when his Hopi friend and colleague, Cowboy Dashee, asks him for help in proving Billy's innocence. The diamond's appearance creates excitement in worlds far from the desert. Embittered Joanna Craig believes it may lead her to vindication and revenge - proof that she is the daughter of John Clarke, a diamond dealer killed in a plane crash over the canyon; his arm still manacled to his diamond case, his body never recovered, and Craig's pregnant mother spurned by his wealthy family. The man in control of the Clarke estate shares Craig's belief, and is determined to beat her to the diamond's source. Both are looking for Clarke's body and its DNA, one to prove her lineage, one to make sure she never gets the chance. The digressing journey through the story also involves Chee's earnest and spunky fiancée Bernie Manuelito, a secret Hopi ritual, a soulless psychopath, and a hermit's obsession with the Skelton Man, an irreverent name for the Hopi god of death. The canyon climax includes a spectacular storm and is exciting and satisfying enough to make its farfetched elements hardly noticeable. A fine, atmospheric yarn.

There's little I can add to what has gone before in these reviews. The plot has been clearly summarised. But from the point of view of an English Woman now settled, living and loving in Rock Point, AZ (in a predominantly Navajo population) -one of the remotest parts of the Navajo Nation I can only marvel yet again at how well Hillerman captures what is now my part of the world. Inevitably the series is running down-it's a sad factor of age, but Skeleton Man contains all the things a good Hillerman must have: A tight plot, spare writing- no words wasted, realism, characters you care about - if too little of old favourites but it also has a broader sense of closure. There was a sense of Sinister Pig being the last book in the series, but it is more strongly felt in this book. Cherish what we have don't complain! This book is brilliant! It's not often I see anyone out here reading in public outside the school and I have seen three people from teenage to elderly with this book this week. Hillerman is on top form here and it would be churlish of me to critcise a book which ties up and rounds out charaters as the author himself must be coming to terms with his own aging. You'll only be depriving yourself if you give this book a miss. I loved it, both as part of the Leaphorn and Chee novels but also on it's own. Read it, enjoy and then come out here and see the Navajo Nation for yourself if you haven't already done so!

Every Tony Hillerman book I am blessed with is to be treasured. Not only for its loving and vivid descriptions of a starkly beautiful part of this world but also of the tough and wonderful people who populate it. The mystery plot of each novel is a bonus that is made better for all that surrounds it. This one is centered around a terrible disaster, rich and powerful people doing everything in their power to stay rich and powerful and the obsessive crusade of an illigitimate daughter to establish her place in the world. Mix all of these volatile dynamics with a fortune in diamonds and you've got a vehicle suitable for two of my favorite literary "friends". Unfortunately, there is too little of Leaphorn/Chee and too much of characters that we will never see again and who really did not earn a great deal of my interest. They are merely a background against which Hillerman displays, again, the disparity of white men's greed against the Navajo believe in "hozho" - the balance of man and nature that is at the center of Navajo beliefs and of these novels. As I said at the first of this ramble, every new Tony Hillerman novel that comes my way is eagerly snapped up. The main difference between the first ones I read many years ago and Skeleton Man is that I am forcing myself to read it slowly and savor every page for I live with the knowledge of each new one runs the increasing risk of it being the last. God forbid! Bullet Points: Skeleton Man has a serviceable plot with adequate characters. It is too short for my tastes but it still provides a happy dose of everything that is wonderful about Mr. Hillerman's body of work.