Okay, I wanted to read more about Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn, but did I want to read what the daughter of their creator wrote? In hard cover or at full price, probably not. This was a chance I was willing to take. Glad I did.
But it took awhile for me to read the book. I put it in the glove box of the Miata. I put the Miata in storage last October. I tried to get it out a couple weeks ago, but there was this flat tire. When I got the repaired tire back on the car Saturday, I discovered the battery was dead. Even after I borrowed a car and jumper cables, the battery would not hold a charge. But I did find the book.
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| Anne Hillerman |
Anne Hillerman follows her father's model by extolling the beauty of the desert while describing some of the long drives through the reservation and to nearby cities. She stays true to his characters, although Joe Leaphorn is unconcious in a hospital bed during most of the story. (Spoiler Alert: It's really not nice to nearly kill off your father's original hero in the first chapter of your book.) She weaves a good story and a complex mystery that takes place partly on and partly off the reservation. So local cops, the FBI, and the Navajo police are involved.
I had the feeling several times that sections of the book were originally longer than the published version and that the editor guided the author in slimming down the size of the novel. Those "abbreviations" didn't always help, but it was a 360-page paperback.
On the other hand, some of the pivotal action scenes seemed to go on and on and on. It happens on TV mysteries and in some books, but do evil doers ever take time to explain what they're doing and why to their victims? If it were me, I'd pull the trigger, start the fire, crash the car and get out. Explanations? Who needs them? Oh, readers or viewers who didn't get the message from the story! Seems like a deficit of story telling rather than overly loquacious villians.
Okay, I liked Spider Woman's Daughter. Maybe not as much as most of Tony Hillerman's books. But, it's been a long time since I read one of those and not all of his books were equally good.
- The author's web site
- Carolyn Haley's review at The New York Journal of Books
- Anne Hillerman continues the Leaphorn and Chee tradition in The Sante Fe New Mexican
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