Product Description
This is the Borders Recorded Books Unabridged audiobook on seven compact discs. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Same Hillerman elements with a different slant
Looks like a skeleton of a climber was found on a ledge on Ship Rock. Could this solve the mystery of a person missing for many years? Retired Joe Leaphorn is given a retainer to find out the circumstances. He enlists the help of Jim Chee.

Chee has his plate pretty full trying to juggle his love life, being acting LT., dealing with an over zealous assistant. On top of that he has to compete with a boring snob of an authority in tracking down cattle rustler(s).

As usual all the clues are laid out in the open and if one works at it they may be able to peace the puzzle together before Joe or Jim. It is fun watching how it is reviled to them. We also have plenty of what makes Hillerman famous and that is descriptions of the Four Corners area and the Navaho way. I appreciate this as I have spent many a summer watching Ship Rock from Mesa Verde.

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Customer Reviews (1)

Three Joe Leaphorn Mysteries
---"The Blessing Way"---

"He stirs, he stirs, he stirs, he stirs,"

"Among the lands of dawning, he stirs, he stirs.
The pollen of dawning, he stirs, he stirs.
Now in old age wandering, he stirs, he stirs.
Now on the trail of beauty, he stirs,
Talking God, he stirs..."

It is in the 1970's pre-cell phone where parallel lives take place. We have an Indian wanted for a stabbing who turns up dead. Not just dead but in the wrong place. Not the wrong place but in a mysterious way. There is also a team of archeologists looking into which craft (they just may find it). One archeologist seems to be missing. A strange Navaho has his hat stolen but the silver hat band left. A woman is coming to visit her fiancé is in for an adventure she did not count on. From all of this Joe Leaphorn must make some sort of sense.

It is the descriptiveness of Tony Hillerman that goes beyond the mystery to pant a picture of a different world that we get to glimpse in the process of reading.
Read the book but the addition of the voice of George Guidall ads a dimension to the story by helping visualize the people and correcting pronunciation of certain words. I suggest you read the book and listen to the recorded version.

----------------------------------------
---"Dance Hall of the Dead"---

The Fire God is missing

Twelve-year-old Ernesto Cata (Zuñi) is practicing to be the Fire God in a local ceremony. His best buddy George Bowlegs (Navaho) is a Zuñi wana-be.

Ernesto is missing and there is a pool of blood by his bike. The next day his buddy George runs off. It is up to Sgt. Joe Leaphorn to find the boys before anything happens to them (if it has not already.)

As with most of Hillerman's novels everyone has different agendas and stories that overlap. There are alleged stolen artifacts form and archeological dig, and possibly a drug interest. They may or may not interact. We also get a good dose of Zuñi culture, and a feel that we are in the area.

Hillerman is nice enough to leave sufficient clues to let you figure out the mystery before Leaphorn and you then get to watch as he finally comes around to your way of thinking.

Another book by Hillerman "The Boy who Made Dragonfly" further describes the dance hall of the dead (Kothluwalawa.)

Author's Note:
"In this book, the setting is genuine.The village of Zuñi and the landscape of the Zuñi reservation are depicted to the best of my ability.The characters are purely fictional.The view the reader receives of the Sha'lak'o religion is as it might be seen by a Navajo with an interest in ethnology.It does not pretend to be more than that."
--------------------------------
---"Listening Woman"---

A great cliff hanger

Joe Leaphorn can put the loose ends together even when no one else realizes there are loose ends.The story starts out with an old man being bludgeoned and later Leaphorn is intentionally almost rundown by a mysterious man in gold rimed glasses.He tries to tie these together.Then he uses an old robbery as an excuse to get out of a Boy Scout commitment and track down the antagonist.Needles to say the story gets more convoluted for everyone but Leaphorn.

This is an excellent story with the added plus of the description of the area and the Navaho that occupies this area.What seems at first to be over description later enhances the final scenes.

Speaking about the location and Navaho, even the schools, this story is even more enjoyable if you read "Seldom Disappointed" first.Tony describes how he comes by the plot and the people.He even goes out to locations first as research.
I have read the book but the addition of the voice of George Guidall adds a dimension to the story by helping visualize the people and correcting pronunciation of certain words.I suggest you read the book and listen to the recorded version.


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Product Description
Turbulence, bravery, and betrayals great and small characterized frontier life in the 1850s. It was a time when an uneasy balance of power existed between white settlers and Native Americans. The sixth title in this rich, evocative series follows a group of soldiers as they learn to cope with a world of ever-changing and conflicting loyalties. This novel brings to life the texture of day-to-day life of Native Americans before the tragic fate of the Indian Nations was sealed. . ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Brothers in Blood is a Bore
Author Ken Englade uproots Jean Benoit from his post at Fort Laramie, Wyoming and sends him to Fort Macy in Sante Fe, New Mexico.Unfortunately, left behind are his wife Inge, friends Jace, Ashby, Erich and everyone and anyone else the reader has grown to care about over the sequence of events in this series of the old West.After attempting to get interested in a collection of priests and misfits, I must admit to giving up on this book and moving on to Comanche Trail, by Will Camp.I have no idea why someone else has picked up the story, but it at least gets back to the original characters ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

"Behind him above the dark red sandstone wall of the mesa,..."
"...a skyscape of feathery cirrus clouds stretched southward toward Mexico. To the west over the Painted Desert, they were flushed with the afterglow of sunset" From `Dance Hall of the Dead"

At a book signing in Ft. Worth to benefit a homeless shelter, Tony Hillerman expressed how much fun it was to make this book with his brother Barney.

This book contains 200 spectacular pictures from all over Hillerman country. Many pages are picture only with the caption on the page prior or after. The text among the pictures is a combination of history and exerts from Hillerman novels. Now when you read the novels these pictures will come to mind.

Reading this book and looking at the pictures will make you homesick even if you have never been there.
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Product Description
This digital document is an article from World Literature Today, published by University of Oklahoma on March 1, 2009. The length of the article is 1704 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: The bag lady's novels: Tony Hillerman and the craft of writing.(International Crime & Mystery)
Author: J. Madison Davis
Publication: World Literature Today (Magazine/Journal)
Date: March 1, 2009
Publisher: University of Oklahoma
Volume: 83Issue: 2Page: 9(3)

Distributed by Gale, a part of Cengage Learning ... Read more

Product Description
An enchanting Zuni myth is retold by the bestselling author of Skinwalkers. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Out of unselfish love
"And because you have made me out of unselfish love you have touched me with life"

This is a transcript of a story that was verbally passed down through the generations of the Zuni. It was recorded in 1883 by Frank Hamilton Cushing. He had become a chief Priest of the Bow society of the Macaw Clan. The story is based on a drought that happened to the Ha'wi-k'uh about 1300; before the coming of the Europeans (1539-1540).
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The basic tail is of a people that treated food like mud, and were extremely rude to their corn sprits that were in the form of two old ladies. Only two children and a discarded old woman paid them any respect. This was very bad as the Zuni is part of nature and therefore nature and strangers are to be treated with respect.

Thus the story is of the drought that sent the people away and leaving the two children and old lady behind.
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If one is desperate to hear the story instead of read it then this media is ok. It is too bad they someone thought they had to abridge such a short story. Every word is necessary to understand the myth. It does not distract from the experience to have a non native American (Debra Winger) read the story. I suggest you buy a copy of the book to find what is missing and for the young ones to see the illustrations.
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Product Description
In THE BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES OF THE CENTURY, best-selling author Tony Hillerman and mystery expert Otto Penzler present an unparalleled treasury of American suspense fiction that every fan will cherish. Offering the finest examples from all reaches of the genre, this collection charts the mystery's eminent history from the turn-of-the-century puzzles of Futrelle, to the seminal pulp fiction of Hammett and Chandler, to the mystery story's rise to legitimacy in the popular mind, a trend that has benefited masterly writers like Westlake, Hunter, and Grafton. Nowhere else can readers find a more thorough, more engaging, more essential distillation of American crime fiction. Penzler, the Best American Mystery Stories series editor, and Hillerman winnowed this select group out of a thousand stories, drawing on sources as diverse as Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and Esquire, Collier's and The New Yorker. Giants of the genre abound -- Raymond Chandler, Stephen King, Dashiell Hammett, Lawrence Block, Ellery Queen, Sara Paretsky, and others -- but the editors also unearthed gems by luminaries rarely found in suspense anthologies: William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, Damon Runyon, Harlan Ellison, James Thurber, and Joyce Carol Oates. Mystery buffs and newcomers alike will delight in the thrilling stories and top-notch writing of a hundred years' worth of the finest suspense, crime, and mystery writing.Amazon.com Review
Anthologies are tricky things for editors: to select a story for inclusion is to make oneself a target for readers who wonder hotly why X or Y or Z wasn't chosen. And to be so brash as to deem an anthology the best anything of the century practically invites scorn and condemnation. But with The Best American Mystery Stories of the Century, Tony Hillerman, Edgar-winning author, and Otto Penzler, founder of the Mysterious Press, step boldly to the firing line with a salvo of 55 stories that are so devious and absorbing, challenging and rewarding that most readers will hold their fire.

The collection stretches from O. Henry's 1903 tale of a bank robber who abandons his trade ("A Retrieved Reformation") to Dennis Lehane's unsettling sketch of a post-Gothic southern town and its canine conundrum ("Running Out of Dog," 1999), and brings together authors who at first seem uneasy bedfellows. William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway jostle for space with Donald Westlake and Stephen Greenleaf; Willa Cather and Flannery O'Conner stare combatively at Sara Paretsky and Sue Grafton. But as one reads along, these potentially tense alliances relax: the boundaries between "modern" and "classic," "pulp" and "literature" evanesce, leaving instead a shimmering web of serendipitous affiliations: O. Henry and Stephen King nod amiably to one another, united by the skill of their devious narrative twists.

Hillerman and Penzler's selections reflect a century-long shift in mystery fiction from an emphasis on an exterior landscape--replete with the tangible artifacts of who, what, where, when, how, why--to a growing interest in the geography of interiority. This landscape thrives on the amorphousness of its own features. In Tom Franklin's "Poachers," for example, the puzzle hardly matters at all: real people, and their endlessly convoluted relationships, do. Three orphaned brothers who live as predators in the swamps of the Gulf Coast, the old widower who loves them, the sheriff who pities them all--who kills two of the boys and blinds a third? We never really know. In any case, Franklin's infinitely shaded nuances of silence and speech matter far more than the violence of the crime itself.

And for those readers who, when all is read and done, still insist that they could have done a much better job of judging, Penzler's disarming editorial shrug serves to remind that any anthology should be approached with equanimity, a touch of resignation, and not a little humor: "There are no scientific instruments that can tell a reader which of Harlan Ellison's two Edgar-winning short stories is better. It is a coin toss, and it can't be anything else. Let's just live with it." Happily, The Best American Mystery Stories of the Century is an extraordinarily rewarding companion. --Kelly Flynn ... Read more

Customer Reviews (11)

Good stories - but not mysteries
This is an almost omnibus size collection of OK to great crime stories.Many people (myself included) would not consider these mystery stories, and at least one of them doesn't even concern a crime of any sort.There are New York Times and [...] reviews available online that echo this sentiment.

As pointed out in the Amazon.com review, it is impossible to please everyone when picking the best of anything.It is hard to argue that Chandler's "Red Wind", for example, is not one of his very best, it is also very hard to believe that Ellery Queen never wrote anything better than "The Adventure of the President's Half Disme" - which is decent, but not great - and an actual mystery.In this collection, the editor's choices sometimes do leave a lot to be desired too.

It also seems clear that Faulkner, Steinbeck, Cather, etc. have been included mainly to elevate the general tone above the pulp reputation of mystery/crime stories.In my opinion, this didn't help the collection at all.

In summary, most of these stories were a good read or better, but don't expect genuine mysteries.

I would recommend The Mysterious West, another mystery anthology edited by Tony Hillerman.

These May, In Fact, Be "The Best" American Mystery (and Suspense) Stories ...
Recently, I used this anthology in an introduction to mystery/suspense course. The extraordinary pricing of the text initially caught my attention (students/parents appreciate any text under $100.00, let alone under $20.00) ... then I checked the table of contents: STELLAR! Everything I needed for American Twentieth Century was here! (Which limited my time at the photocopy machine!! Thank you!!)

Whether you are a professor, teacher, or a just person interested in mystery/suspense, The Best American Mystery Stories of the Century offers a broad examination of the genre (and its subgenres). It addresses (among others):

- "Locked-Room" (i.e. crime committed under seemingly impossible circumstances) via Jacques Futrelle's "The Problem of Cell 13."

- "Hardboiled" (i.e. an American response to Britain's "Cozy" movement ... it is unsentimental in its depiction of violence, sex, and crime) via Dashiell's Hammett's "The Gutting of Coffignal" (I love the brilliant bits of humor in this piece and percussive use of repetition!!) and Raymond Chandler's "Red Wind."

- "Noir" (a subset of "Hardboiled" which features a layperson instead of a detective and often focuses on sex and self-destruction) via James M. Cain "The Baby in the Icebox" (one of my ALL-TIME favorites) and Cornell Woolrich's "Rear Window" (later brought to the big-screen by Alfred Hitchcock).

- Contemporary Suspense via Stephen King's "Quitter's Inc." (later translated to film in Lewis Teague's Stephen King's Cat's Eye).

Moreover, this anthology illustrates the multiple applications of mystery. For instance, it includes logic/math-based works such as Harry Kemelman's "The Nine Mile Walk" (though I have yet to find a student who enjoys this piece ... an episode of Numb3rs may make a great substitute here). Additionally, it addresses feminist works such as Susan Glaspell's "A Jury of Her Peers" and social works such as William Faulkner's "An Error in Chemistry."

One note of criticism: I would have enjoyed a preface to each piece (and not a tiny biographical note in the back of the text). (The editors of the Norton Anthologies are the experts at this ... modeling this work on their outstanding products would make this text invaluable!!) In a perfect world, it would have been great to introduce each short-story with a brief description of where it fits into the mystery/suspense spectrum. As is, it is entirely possible that a person reading this collection could walk-away having never heard of "locked-room" ... and that would be a pity.

This well-compiled text makes an excellent foundation for any mystery/suspense course or personal-learning experience. These are classic works and the price is unbeatable! Highly recommended!

Great review of the century in mystery
You'll read Raymond Chandler, Ross MacDonald, Willa Cather, Dashiell Hammett, and many more. Enjoyable overview of mystery writing in the last century.

A must buy for fans of the authors
Editors are always a little presumptuous when they use a title starting with "The Best..."The editor of this volume has selected 46 American authors from the 20th century, and included one story by each author.He has included some well known novelists like Faulkner, who were not known for writing short stories or mysteries; and excluded some well known mystery writers who are known for writing short stories, e.g., Marcia Muller, Lawrence Sanders, Michael Collins, etc.

Some of the stories are crime stories rather than mysteries, i.e., you know who pulled the trigger.It is a good collection of stories (in spite of omissions) starting with O. Henry's "A Retrieved Reformation," originally published in 1903, and ending with Dennis Lehane's "Running Out of Dog," originally published in 1999.In Between there are stories by Dashiell Hammett, Ring Lardner, John Steinbeck, Damon Runyon, Raymond Chandler, William Faulkner, Ellery Queen, John D. MacDonald, Ross MacDonald, Joyce Carol Oates, Stephen King, Sue Grafton, and many other writers.The short stories can be read in any order, starting with your favorite authors, and can be read at leisure.It includes stories like Cornell Woolrich's "Rear Window," later made into a motion picture.

Many of the authors included are best known as novelists.It is necessary to track down their short stories in order to have a complete collection of their work, and that can be difficult as many magazines have gone out of existance, and the stories may or may not be included in anthologies.

The collection is a bargain buy with 800 pages of stories.There are short biographical sketches of the authors at the end of the volume.Many of them died young.Jacques Futrelle went down with the Titanic, staying behind after helping women and children into the lifeboats.

Most modern authors do not write many short stories.As one author noted, it takes a significant amount of time and intellectual energy to write a good story, and there is very little financial return.Consequently, it is a rare find when you encounter a short story by an established author.

First Rate Anthology - Good Selections from Ten Decades
The Best American Mysteries Stories of the Century, compiled by Tony Hillerman and Otto Penzler, is a remarkably good anthology.The editors imposed few rules on themselves, other than identifying the best stories.Some years are skipped while others have two or three offerings. They did limit their choices to only one story for a given author, perhaps unfairly penalizing exceptional writers like Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, Harry Kemelman, Ellery Queen, John McDonald, and Ross McDonald.

In general (but with clear exceptions like A Jury of Her Peers by Susan Glaspell), the earlier stories are largely puzzle mysteries, ones that challenge the reader to outsmart the author, while the later stories offer more character development and psychological depth.Readers less familiar with puzzle mysteries may find the earlier stories a bit foreign, and might benefit by reading the stories in this collection in reverse chronological order, thereby, beginning with more familiar terrain.

My favorites span the 1930s thru the 1950s, a period in which American authors began that major transformation of the American mystery as best characterized by the writing of Raymond Chandler. With Chandler's guidance, the pulp mystery fiction of earlier decades metamorphosed successfully into what might be called formal literature, writing more concerned with character development and with social issues.

More recent decades include great stories like The Comforts of Home (Flannery O'Connor), The Possibility of Evil (Shirley Jackson), Do With Me What You Will (Joyce Carol Oates), The Parker Shotgun (Sue Grafton), and Poachers (Tom Franklin).

Fortunately for the avid reader of mystery stories, many authors successful in other genre have seemingly been unable to resist trying their hand at the mystery story.In this anthology we find, for example, O. Henry, Willa Cather, John Steinbeck, Pearl Buck, William Faulkner, and Flannery O'Connor.

Not all stories will likely appeal to all readers, but there is a treasure trove of gems in this collection. There are 10 stories dating from 1900-1928, 16 from 1933-1957, 9 from 1962-1978, and 11 from 1981-1990. This is an exceptional anthology. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The Fire God is missing
Twelve-year-old Ernesto Cata (Zuñi) is practicing to be the Fire God in a local ceremony. His best buddy George Bowlegs (Navaho) is a Zuñi wana-be.

Ernesto is missing and there is a pool of blood by his bike. The next day his buddy George runs off. It is up to Sgt. Joe Leaphorn to find the boys before anything happens to them (if it has not already.)

As with most of Hillerman's novels everyone has different agendas and stories that overlap. There are alleged stolen artifacts form and archeological dig, and possibly a drug interest. They may or may not interact. We also get a good dose of Zuñi culture, and a feel that we are in the area.

Hillerman is nice enough to leave sufficient clues to let you figure out the mystery before Leaphorn and you then get to watch as he finally comes around to your way of thinking.

Another book by Hillerman "The Boy who Made Dragonfly" further describes the dance hall of the dead (Kothluwalawa.)

Author's Note:
"In this book, the setting is genuine.The village of Zuñi and the landscape of the Zuñi reservation are depicted to the best of my ability.The characters are purely fictional.The view the reader receives of the Sha'lak'o religion is as it might be seen by a Navajo with an interest in ethnology.It does not pretend to be more than that."

The Dark Wind (Jim Chee Novels)
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Product Description
In the days leading up to the Civil War, a bloody shootout between soldiers and renegades leaves twelve immigrants dead and a villainous outlaw named ""Notch"" Henderson still roaming the frontier. ... Read more

Product Description
A sterling collection of classic and contemporary fiction and nonfiction evoking the unique spirit of the West and its people, selected and introduced by one of today's premier chroniclers of the Western landscape and a New York Times bestselling author. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

A Great Read
This is a wonderful collection of fact and fiction about the West covering all eras of cowboys, Indians, outlaws, explorers, Hispanos, frontier women and much, much more.

A bedside Western reader. . .
With 142 separate readings in this 500+ page book, Hillerman's anthology of Western writing makes a great bedside reader for anyone with an interest in the frontier West as it was lived by a vast variety of people. Not surprisingly, this writer of great crime fiction set on the Navajo reservation of New Mexico and Arizona devotes many of the first 100 pages to the "first Westerners," Native Americans, and the Hispanic history of the Southwest. The rest of the book has sections on settlers, cowboys, mining, the military, and the law and outlaws. Additional sections represent women, tall tales and practical jokes, travel, language, and "characters." The book closes with a fiction section of short stories and excerpts from novels.

As you might expect in a book called "The Best of the West," there are writings by Edward Abbey, Wallace Stegner, Owen Wister, N. Scott Momaday, J. Frank Dobie, Meriwether Lewis, and Helen Hunt Jackson. The great surprise of the book, if you're familiar with Western literature, is the many readings from sources you're likely not to have heard of before. There are absorbing vignettes drawn from period newspapers, journals, memoirs, letters and other little-known publications.

Some of my favorites include a far-fetched autobiographical sketch by Calamity Jane, an account of a "love scrape" in Las Cruces by cowboy writer Charlie Siringo, Eugene Manlove Rhodes' description of loading up a chuck wagon, Raphael Pumpelly's report of the discomforts of travel by overland stage, H. M. Chittenden's account of the amazing bad luck of a man who survived a series of near-death mishaps on a visit to Yellowstone country in 1877, James Rusling's description of traveling down the Columbia River by steamboat and train, Alexander Majors' informative account of the short, perilous history of the pony express, a description of young J. C. Penney's first day of business in Kemmerer, Wyoming, and a selection on sod houses from social historian Everett Dick.

Excerpts from novels are mixed in with the historical accounts. I especially liked John Steinbeck's rhapsodic description of Highway 66 from "The Grapes of Wrath," a breathless homage to the title character of Owen Wister's "The Virginian," a description of the Colorado mining town, Leadville, from Wallace Stegner's Pulitzer Prize winning "Angle of Repose," Dorothy Scarborough's grim account of West Texas wind, in her novel "The Wind," and a description of driving down an early paved road in California from Upton Sinclair's "Oil!" And there are complete short stories: Stephen Crane's "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky," capturing the impact that a young bride has on the rough world of frontier men, and Bret Harte's "The Outcasts of Poker Flat," set in 1850 California and giving the reader a more melodramatic rendering of a the same theme -- the taming influence of a young woman's innocence.

I'm happy to recommend this enjoyable anthology to anyone with an interest in the social history of the American West. (...)

A great way to read history!
This is a terrific book for anyone that enjoys history but is not looking for a detailed, academic analysis.This book lets you learn about the old west from the people that lived there.It contains excerpts from a wide variety of primary sources including newspaper articles, letters, and diaries.You'll recognize the names of many of the people whose stories appear.There is also plenty of material written by people who never became famous, but who do have stories to tell about real life in the west.

This book did what all good books should do - it left me fascinated and wanting to learn more.

First-hand tales of the Wild Wild West!
Among the history books about the Wild West this is like a siver dollar among paper money: While many of them are just so much rustling paper, unable to wake the spirit of the time or bring the people to life, this one speaks with their own voice, loud and clear.To me, a student from Germany, who knew the West only from Hollywood movies and Karl May (the only author I missed in the anthology, but he is rather a German speciality), the whole time gained flesh and bones while reading the accounts of such divers people as Indian chiefs and Philadelphia ladies turned Cowgirl. The possibilities of a place where conventions didn't count as much as your ability to ride a horse or rope a cow strike one very vivid from these pages. Besides - not all cowboys were white (or male). All the different people that made up the Wild West get to have their say and your can, after reading this anthology, truly say for yourself that you can picture, say Dalton City at it's peak. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Navahos and more
This time we confront a different Pueblo People the Hopi. In the Hopi there are sect or Koshari societies; they do not practice curing; they are concerned with fertility and growth. Their religion is more personal than public and clans are most important.

Along With a new people we are treated to a piece of history; The Spanish had a tradition of The Canes of Office here. Governors and lieutenant governors and the like were issued a cane as a symbol of office. Ten years after the Gadsden purchase. The Indians stayed neutral curing the Civil War. So President Abraham Lincoln has some canes made of black ebony and crowned with silver inscribed with his signature, "A. Lincoln." These where given the nineteen different pueblos, each cane had the pueblo name on it.

Tony Hillerman spins his magic once more in this story of missing people and a death that may be related or religion and again maybe just down right greed. Chee and Leaphorn bust work together to find meaning and reason. In the Hillerman tradition all the clues are laid out in the open allowing you to bet them to the conclusion if you can.

Good companion book for this story is "American Indians of the Southwest" by Berth P. Dutton

... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

book review
This was a great value for the price, the book was like new, and added to my collection of Tony Hillerman books.

From the Inside Jacket
"Hillerman is surely one of the finest and most original craftsmen at work in the genre today."
-Boston Globe Book Review

Now available for the first time in one volume are three of New York Times bestselling author Tony Hillerman's most popular novels:'The Fallen Man', 'The First Eagle', and 'Hunting Badger'.In these pages, Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn and Sergeant Jim Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police are investigating perplexing and mystifying crimes.'Leaphorn, Chee and More' is a must for all mystery fans.

'The Fallen Man' reunites newly retired Navajo Tribal Policeman Joe Leaphorn with Acting Lieutenant Jim CHee to finally close a case involving a sniper, a skeleton, and eleven years of unanswered questions.In this evocative myster, the past and the present join forces in a most unholy union.

'In The First Eagle', Jim Chee catches a Hopi poacher huddled over a butchered Navajo Tribal Police officer.Chee seems to have an open-and-shut case--until Joe Leaphorn blows it wide open.

'Hunting Badger' balances politics, outsiders, and fugitive armed bandits.After the Ute tribe's gambling casino is raided, FBI agents swarm the maze of canyons on the Utah-Arizona border.But Chee and Leaphorn find fatal flaws in the federal theory that accuses a wounded deputy sheriff as a suspect, and they are soon caught in the most deadly hunt of their lives. ... Read more

Product Description
Edgar Allan Poe's "Murders in the Rue Morgue" launched the detective story in 1841. The genre began as a highbrow form of entertainment, a puzzle to be solved by a rational sifting of clues. In Britain, the stories became decidedly upper crust: the crime often committed in a world of manor homes and formal gardens, the blood on the Persian carpet usually blue. But from the beginning, American writers worked important changes on Poe's basic formula, especially in use of language and locale.

In The Oxford Book of American Detective Stories, Tony Hillerman and Rosemary Herbert bring together thirty-three tales that illuminate both the evolution of crime fiction in the United States and America's unique contribution to this highly popular genre. From elegant "locked room" mysteries, to the hard-boiled realism of the '30s and '40s, to the great range of styles seen today, this superb collection includes the finest crime writers, including Erle Stanley Gardner, Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald, Rex Stout, Ellery Queen, Ed McBain, Sue Grafton, and Hillerman, a best-selling crime writer himself. And we sample a wide variety of styles, from tales with a strongly regional flavor, to hard-edged pulp fiction, to stories with a feminist perspective.

Throughout, the editors provide highly knowledgeable introductions to each piece, written from the perspective of fellow writers and reflecting a life-long interest--not to say love--of this quintessentially American genre. Hillerman and Herbert bring us a gold mine of glorious stories that can be read for sheer pleasure, but that also illuminate how the crime story evolved from the drawing room to the back alley, and how it came to explore every corner of our nation and every facet of our lives. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Breaking the Rules, the Evolution of the American Detective Story - Good Collection
Critics have observed that the widely popular detective story is essentially a literary game, and have speculated that readers might tire of its structured formula, thereby leading to the eventual disappearance of this genre. Nonetheless, after more than 150 years, the mystery story remains vibrant. Why is this so? The Oxford Book of American Detective Stories provides an answer.

Tony Hillerman and Rosemary Herbert have assembled stories that trace the evolution of the American detective short story.Their contention, amply supported by their selections, is that American authors have stretched, modified, and violated the rules and structural form of the detective story, thereby continuously enriching this genre, and ensuring its longevity. Each story is preceded with an interesting, one-page discussion on topics like the emergence of credible female detectives, the growth of regionalism, and the development of authentic, psychologically complex characters.

This literary theme is interesting in itself, but the primary attraction is the stories. I especially liked I'll Be Waiting(Raymond Chandler), Small Homicide (Ed McBain), Guilt-Edged Blonde (Ross MacDonald), Christmas Party (Rex Stout), Words Do Not A Book Make (Bill Pronzini), Benny's Space (Marcia Muller) and Chee's Witch (Tony Hillerman).

Some were titles that I have encountered elsewhere: Rear Window (Cornell Woolrich), The Problem of Cell 13 (Jacques Futrelle), The Doomdorf Mystery (Melville Davisson Post), The Parker Shotgun (Sue Grafton), An Error in Chemistry (Faulkner) and The Murders in the Rue Morgue (Poe).Others were by early masters of this genre: Erle Stanley Gardner, John Dickson Carr, Ellery Queen, Anthony Boucher, and Edward Hoch.

All in all, the thirty-three stories selected by Hillerman and Herbert create a satisfying, enjoyable anthology, one that will appeal to avid readers of detective fiction.

Interesting selection
There are a good mix of stories here.They range over a broad time period, early to present.I like the fact that there were some authors I haven't read yet, or others that I never associated with mysteries.The reason I didn't give it five stars is that there were quite a few stories that I had already read in other anthologies. Nice introductions to each story, with background info on the author.

A remarkable collection of American detective fiction
I am taking a class this semester, Mysteries, and this book is the required text.I have always enjoyed mysteries, but this book has added to that pleasure immensely.Hillerman and Herbert have done an extraordinaryjob of piecing together a good representative slice of Americandetective/mystery writers past and present.The books begins with Poe's"The Murders in the Rue Morgue."The editors wrap the selectionup with Marcia Muller's "Benny's Space," published in 1991.Thebook spans the evolution of the American detective story throughout itsentire history.

I highly recommend this anthology to anyone who enjoysreading the short story.With few exceptions, the stories in this book arevery enjoyable mysteries. ... Read more

Product Description
Buster Mesquite's Cowboy Band give a quirky southwestern retelling of a classic children's tale, with a much more satisfactory ending. Delightful illustrations by Navajo artist Ernest Franklin, who has been illustrating Tony Hillerman's Navajo policemen for many years. Visual puns and hidden jokes make Franklin's drawings a delight to revisit over and over, always with a fresh sense of discovery. Humor is a large part of Native American life and traditional culture. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Not very good, but plenty loud
Tony Hillerman has assembled four down and out cowboy band wannabees, faintly reminiscent of some other musicians from Brementown, but perfectly at home among the cactus and mesas of the Southwest. Buster Mesquite's Band isn't very good, but it's plenty loud, and they are destined for adventure on their quirky journey to fame and fortune, helped along the way by their unabashed enthusiasm for their music and some plain old dumb luck. Those notorious bandits they stumble upon don't stand a chance when Buster's Band dazzles, or rather startles, them with their latest tune.
Ernest Franklin's energetic illustrations make every page an eyeful that enhances Hillerman's spare and witty style of storytelling. Buster's Band gets a definite A for effort.
Nancy Tandberg
New Mexico Kids! magazine ... Read more

Product Description
Three compelling mysteries--People of Darkness, The Dark Wind, and The Ghostway--from one of today's most popular and talented writers are now available in this single volume.Amazon.com Review
Three powerful mysteries are compiled in one volume, all featuring Navajo Tribal Policeman Jim Chee. People of Darkness asks questions of cultural identity and tribal beliefs. Set in the southwestern Bad Country, a bloodthirsty assassin waits to prevent the revelation of 30-year-old secrets. The Dark Wind is filled with Navajo sorcery and white man's greed. After Chee is barred from following up on a multimillion-dollar drug case, he discovers that a vandalism incident and a murder may be tied to the case. The Ghostway includes a healing ceremony whose cure could be death. Follow an odyssey of murder and revenge that moves from a traditional Navajo dwelling to contemporary Los Angeles. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Jim Chee lives in two worlds
"People of Darkness"
"The mole, his hunting place is darkness."

"The mole, his hunting song is silence."

Sgt Jim Chee of the Navaho tribal police is asked by the wife of Benjamin J. Vines to retrieve a mysterious box stolen from her husband's safe while he was away. When mister vines returns he tells Chee that it was all a mistake and hands Chee a check. We all know Chee can not let this lay still so the mystery leads him to people that use a mole for their talisman "The people of Darkness" and it appears that something (or someone) is killing them all off.

The mystery is fair and Tony Hillerman does not hide clues or surprise suspects to the last minute so it is not too hard to guess most of the plot or who the good guys and bad guys are. We are introduced to the Navaho concept of witches and Mary Landon who will play parts (if she survives) in future novels. In the process we get a vivid description of the four corners and other areas near buy. In People of darkness he picks up a Lotta Burger and I have eaten a few of them my self. In future books we will be introduced to the Navaho Taco. For the anthropologist in us he describes many sings and ways.

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"The Dark Wind"

"A dark wind has entered his soul"

"Enemies unseen... Fears unspoken...... A dark wind has entered his soul"

Navajo Tribal Police Sgt. Jim Chee seems to be batting zero; so far he has not been able to solve a series of seemingly unrelated crimes. In an area that was joint use land between the Navaho and the Hopi (now Hopi) Sgt Jim Chee is given the task of finding the vandal that keeps destroying a windmill placed there to make Hopi life easer. He hears an airplane landing in the dark of night with no lights. The plane crashes and leaves a dying pilot. Also a dead man sitting up against a rock with a note in his hand saying if you want it back contact...

Sgt Chee is told that it is probably drugs and federal jurisdiction. Chee is not supposed to go anywhere near or have anything to do with the case. He has his own problems with the mill, a missing thief, and a mysterious ritual death. Naturally he listens, and can not help it if they overlap.


One of the reasons for reading Hillerman's books maybe more important than the overlying mystery is the descriptions of the area and the Ways of the Navaho and Hopi. Hillerman suggests you also read "The Book of the Hopi" by Frank Waters.

Not as intricate as the book but still fun is the movie "Dark Wind" (Lou Diamond Phillips as Officer Jim Chee, Fred Ward as Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn)

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"The Ghostway"

Shoot out at the Wash-O-Mat

A Shoot out at the Shiprock Wash-O-Mat leads to a puzzle that only Jim Chee with his knowledge of the Ghostway and of death rituals can try to peace together. Related is a disappearance of a school girl (Margaret Sosi) will lead Jim from the New Mexico landscape to the Los Angeles area. There with Hillerman's gift for description we also get a contrasting look of the different worlds. Will He find the girl and what does the puzzle spell out, or will it ever become clear?

This is a close continuation of "People of Darkness" so many of the descriptions and people were previously defined in that book. The reason people read Hillerman is mostly for the descriptions of the places and people his characters encounter. As seen in previous books, in the description of Margaret and other characters, he incorporates his real life experience with World War II and its aftermath.

I've read about everything Hillerman has written.
I've read about everything Hillerman has written, and listened to most of his recorded Books on Tape.I'm an ex-Peace Corps Volunteer and appreciate his fascination and his realistic approach to this original American culture.

Hillerman creates the perfect '90s hunk in Jim Chee.
Tony Hillerman writes great mysteries with complex characters and beautiful descriptions of Navajo country. But when he came up with Navajo police officer Jim Chee, he created the perfect '90s man. Chee is gentle, spiritual, strong, mostly silent, and smart.Plus, he recognizes his own failings--and tries to become a better man. Whew! Who could ask for anything more?

In this book of three earlier Jim Chee mysteries we get the best of Hillerman and a nice dose of all the things he's rightly famous for. There are insights into Native American culture, beautiful descriptions of the Southwest, intriguing mysteries and even a little love story.

When Jim Chee falls in love with Mary Landon, a Wisconsin school teacher who wants him to leave the reservation and work for the FBI, two of the mysteries allow us to follow the development of that relationship as Hillerman explores the difficulties of a cross-cultural relationship. Chee's struggle with his personal life gives a great deal of texture to the mysteries, and his efforts to be both a Navajo singer and a policeman create tension between his personal and professional duties.

Of course, the best part of these mysteries is Hillerman's marvelous grasp of character and place. Open this book and you'll lose yourself on the Navajo reservation with as interesting a group of people as you'll ever wish to meet in real life. Especially that Jim Chee character!

Fast paced mysteries with glimpses into Dinetah
Hillerman, a former newspaperman, spend many,many years in the Southwest, and his novels are set in a land he knows very well.From the mesas to the Chinle Wash these three novels exude the bold topography of the Navajo Nation.

Jim Chee is a member of the Tribal Police, struggling with one foot in the ancient tradions of his born-to and born-for clans while trying to assimilate modern mores. His on-again off-again love is Janet, a spirited Native American lawyer, whose thoroughly modern stance clashes with his ambiguous identity.

Through Jim Chee we experience glimpses into Dinetah, the land, and culture of a fascinating people.The brushstrokes that create this world are deft, with a pyschological appreciation for each character. Hillerman creates a world for all senses to enjoy.

Two stories are set in the Navajo Nation, while one begins there and travels to Los Angeles, CA. Layers upon layers unravel, as Chee investigates seemingly random and unrelated bits.I especially appreciate the culture interwoven into the story line, yet never felt this done in a heavy-handed way.

Each novel is a jewel, each with it's own merits. Villians may be expected, or nearly the last person you suspect, but you'll have your consciousness raised while loving every minute of these tales.Atmospheric, sensitive and compelling Hillerman with have you longing for a trip to this world.

I think it's especially telling that the author has been given the highest honor that can be bestowed on a non-tribal member: Friend of the Navajo People. The Dineh appreciate dry humor, and while Hillerman never creates sterotypes, he gently lampoons instead of deifying. Once you enter THIS land of enchantment you will clambor for more from this splendid storyteller and outdoorsman. ... Read more