Thursday, September 26, 2013

Dance Hall of the Dead

Written by: Tony Hillerman

First line: Shulawitsi, the Little Fire God, member of the Council of the Gods and Deputy to the Sun, had taped his track shoes to his feet.

Why you should read this book: When a Zuni boy dies and a Navajo boy disappears, Lt. Joe Leaphorn is sent to the reservation to look for the missing youth, who is definitely a person of interest in a seemingly motiveless murder. Leaphorn is a true and dedicated detective, willing to do the plodding work it takes to unravel this case: stake out a hippie commune from a cold and snowy cliff, examine all his knowledge of comparative mythology to understand the characters involved, get shot with an animal tranquilizer dart and spend the night hallucinating in a crack in a rock beside a beautiful high school dropout. It becomes increasingly clear to Leaphorn that no one cares about the death of one Indian boy and the disappearance of another, except as they pertain to a big narcotics bust, which makes him all the more determined to discover the truth, even if there will be no one left to share it with at the end of the book.


Why you shouldn’t read this book: You’re really, really wrapped in your Ph.D. dissertation.

No comments: