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.
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