Chee survives to join partner Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn in a frightening investigation that takes them into a dark world of ritual, witchcraft, and blood-all tied to the elusive and evil 'skinwalker.'Ī Thief of Time: A noted anthropologist vanishes at a moonlit Indian ruin where 'thieves of time' ravage sacred ground for profit. Skinwalkers: Three shotgun blasts explode into the trailer of Officer Jim Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police. It’s one of the best mysteries I’ve read, and I suspect it will make you want to read more of Tony Hillerman’s work.Three of New York Times bestselling author Tony Hillerman's most popular novels-a must-have anthology from one of the great masters of suspense. This book represents fine storytelling, with characters and a setting that are outside our normal experience. As he and Chee grope through the dark, a very real menace is watching from a direction they do not expect. Early in his career, when he ignored talk of witches, three murders and a suicide were the result. Leaphorn is not a believer, but he learned by hard experience that other people are. Skinwalkers have fallen away and try to take others with them. With a background in college psychology classes, he understands his role to be restoring people to the core Navajo values of beauty and harmony. When Leaphorn and Chee join forces, their first problem is persuading anyone to talk, when tradition holds that speaking a skinwalker’s name will attract his harmful attention.Ĭhee is learning to be a traditional Navajo healer. Joe Leaphorn, a senior tribal detective, has been trying to solve without success. The bone produces the fatal “corpse sickness.” This bone fragment links three apparently separate killings that Lt. Navajo witches, or skinwalkers, inject bone into the bodies of people they want to kill.

Among the shotgun pellets that litter the floor is a small bone pellet. In the morning, as he cleans up his trailer, Chee makes a frightening discovery. Three shotgun blasts tear holes in the trailer just above the bed where Chee was sleeping moments before. For a moment, thinks he sees a shape in the darkness. When his closest neighbor, a feral cat, shoots through the pet door, Chee gets up to peer out the window at what might have scared it so badly. Officer Jim Chee, of the Navajo Tribal Police, tosses and turns one night in the airstream where he lives in the desert. I offer this brief review to encourage others who may not know Hillerman’s work to give it a look.

I read it again and found it to be a thoroughly satisfying mystery.

As I worked on a recent post, Favorite Fictional Detectives, I realized I didn’t remember the details of Skinwalkers, a key Tony Hillerman novel that I read soon after it was published in 1986.

Skinwalkers by Tony Hillerman