Dark Winds

I finished Dance Hall of the Dead a few days ago. Its best aspect is getting into some of the details of the Zuñi religion. But the plot was generally dull and not compelling.

Spoiler alerts, although I don't think you can spoil something that wasn't very good in the first place. Two children are killed. Why? Does it have something to to with a renegade Zuñi priest looking to enforce a taboo prohibition?

No...it's the leader of an archaeological dig who dons a kachina mask as a way to disguise himself in case he is caught murdering children because they stole some artifacts from his truck that could (somehow) prove that the archaeologist was salting his site with fake artifacts in order to prove a controversial theory that would then make him renowned and give him the academic sword to stick it to his friends who had ridiculed his theory.

I meant to do the run-on sentence to show just how dumb this all was. This will likely be the last Hillerman book that I attempt. He's better at characters and describing the scenery than he is putting a plot together.

This Archer is a hard-bitten individual, wrongly imprisoned, but by his own admission it was a toss-up as to whether he earned it. He's gone to Reno to meet with someone who was recommended by an old buddy of his who thinks Archer might make a good private detective. So he's sent him to someone experienced in the field who might be looking to train or hire.

I kinda-sorta smell cliche written all over this novel. But it's not overtly stupid yet. I just don't expect any new or original territory to be explored. Yawn. Archer comes into town and gets involved in someone trying to shakedown somebody he had met earlier (and who had offered to hire Archer for protection, but he turned him down). Some tough guys are after this guy for a gambling debt. And the last scene I saw playing out, these tough guys may now be after Archer for having intervened earlier.

But I'll stay with it for a while and see where it goes. Low expectations may help.

Hunting Badger ended in a way that I dare say was satisfying, even though not all of the loose ends were tied up.

Hillerman does his best job yet writing his characters and dialogue. He writes characters that you want to be with. Gone is the c-word ambulance-chasing lawyer. Gone are (mostly) the cliche-ridden conflicts between officer and superior. Gone even is an unsatisfying ending.

You get into a little Navajo (and Yute) culture, but not too much. You're not hit over the head with it. This is much more of a procedural cop case than most of his other books. And the Leaphorn character, in particular, is rounded out into much more than the cliche-ridden "strong, silent type." And they (mostly) stopped treated Chee like the idiot junior officer whose purpose in the novel is to be yelled at for being deficient.

Most of the tired cliches are set aside and we can just immerse ourselves in the characters and plot and have a nice ride.

I found The Shape Shifter to be a delightful read. I'm puzzled by the bad reviews at Amazon that obsessed over some of the literary anachronisms (things perhaps written out of order). Because I'm reading these novels in higgledy-piggledy fashion, I wouldn't notice an inconsistency if it bit my on the ass.

But such are the pedestrian minds and tastes of the rabble. No, this story wasn't as active and complex as some of the others. And perhaps that's why it was better. Never did it seem outlandish or improbable. Slow at times, for sure. But realistic.

And the ending was perhaps the most satisfying I've run into yet. No, not particularly clever. It just closed the loop nicely – and not abruptly or in a way that didn't makes sense given the rest of the novel. In my opinion, writing good endings was one of Hillerman's weaknesses. But he made this one work well.

I finished The Wailing Wind. The ending wasn't particularly good but certainly above average for Hillerman. And misogynist that I am, I find Officer Bernadette Manuelito a pleasing character. They let her be a woman, vulnerabilities and all, and don't turn her into a ball-buster. She seems like a real person unlike the ambulance-chasing lawyer that Chee was involved in in earlier books.

Unfortunately, Janet Pete is back again in the next book that I found available at the library, The First Eagle.

This starts out with a plague victim being handled and then studied in the hospital. Apparently this was an outbreak possibly of a very fast-acting black plague. I'm only a few pages into it and then hit the words "Janet Pete." But I'll trudge on.

I finished Talking God the other day.

This is one of Hillerman's more ambitious plots. The synopsis at Amazon covers it:



Whether it's because I read this pages in so many small segments or am just a little dense, I admit to getting slightly lost in certain elements of the plot.

Hillerman tries a bit for the "fish out of water" aspect having both Chee and Leaphorn travel separately (pursuing separate lines of inquiry) to Washington D.C. His lack of nuance in making this more believable keep his books from that next level of quality.

But it's more or less an interesting plot that keeps chugging along. There are some strange elements I've never seen in any of his other books, such as the mama's boy hitman who kowtow's to his mama although his mama is a bit of a monster.

I think I found the central character of Henry Highhawk to have not been fleshed out very well. Maybe it's because Hillerman just throws too much stuff at his character. He's a grave desecrator. He's a museum curator and researcher. He's involved (maybe) in old Chilean left wing politics. He's an artist. He's a wannabe Navaho (¼ from one of his grandmothers). The plot tried to be a little bit grander than perhaps it needed to be.

But it is what it is. This was an okay read.

Last night I just finished what is likely my last Leaphorn-and-Chee novel. And for the most part it was a good one: The Sinister Pig.

The name is a bit of an affectation, trying to squeeze an intriguing name out of what ultimately is just one plot point. But this book was potentially one of his best plotted. The problem was that he either tired of writing it or had reached his word quota (just enough for publication) because this really could have been five or six chapters longer.

But then Tony Hillerman's books have rarely featured a good ending, although there have been a couple I would call "good" and three or four that were "adequate."

Not to give too much away, but the "pig" in this one is just a pipeline pig. And anyone from Arkansas or Texas needs no explanation of what that is. Why is it a "sinister" pig? I don't know. It seems a weak affectation just as the repeated (and equally off-key) label he gives of Leaphorn as "the legendary detective."

In this timeline (I'm reading these out of order), Bernie has joined the immigration service down along the Mexican border. We're not really given much of a reason other than, I guess, she wants to get away from her boss (Chee) who she has feelings for. But because he's her boss, I guess that complicates things.

Leaphorn is retired and gets involved in yet another case because the opinion of the "legendary" detective is still sought out where there is a murder in the district.

I think there's one Leaphorn-and-Chee book left. But it had one or both of them going to Los Angeles and that just didn't sound interesting.