A Navajo rug, murder and a less secular Joe Leaphorn
Mr. Hillerman also shows how crime, on and off the reservation, must be dealt with locally through a bewildering array of law enforcement agencies from the Navajo Tribal Police, through local police and sheriff's departments, and the FBI, which has jurisdiction over felonies on federal land.
Along with the cultural and law enforcement smorgasbords, Mr. Hillerman also gives us finely-drawn mysteries built around series characters that readers can identify with. Mr. Hillerman's characters get older, grow, and evolve, just like real people do.
In "Shape Shifter" the recently-retired Leaphorn has taken to no longer solving crimes about as much as Mr. Hillerman likely would take to no longer telling stories. That is, he's bored out of his tree.
So when another retired and bored cop colleague sends him a current photo from a glossy home magazine of a historic and valuable Navajo rug that supposedly burned up years ago at a crime scene, Leaphorn's curiosity is in gear. As a result, he noses into a criminal hornet's nest that will cost his colleague his life and put Leaphorn's in jeopardy.
1 comment:
Writerfella here --
writerfella fielded this Hillerman back in November on first release. Wow, has Hillerman run out of steam these days. It was the flattest, most straight-forward crime melodrama of any of his recent output. Even the title is a foolie, in that the mystery has little or nothing to do with 'shape-shifting' or Native culture and in fact is about a criminal who assumed another identity after he supposedly had died. In fact, it likely could have been a coffee commercial, given how much is drunk through the whole book. Leaphorn and Jim Chee could have phoned in their parts...
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'
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