Navajo policeman, now retired but still working cases privately, Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn is called to consult on a museum donation theft. Or is it theft? Nobody seems sure if the historic item from the Navajo leaders was donated or not. Like THE TALE TELLER or traditional story weaving on a rug, this missing biil, which is a traditional dress, contains some of the deep-rooted tragic history of the Dineh.

Officer Jim Chee and Officer Bernie Manuelito, happily married and living in a trailer, experience a scorching summer. Thefts from the elderly are a very distressing part of the crime picture and the Four Corners are not immune to intrusions from the modern world. All the local knowledge they can summon may help, but Bernie finds a dead body near a jogging track, guarded by a patient dog. Someone got more deeply in trouble than even the Navajo Tribal Police can handle, and the FBI aren't long in arriving.

Anne Hillerman has really come into her own with the complex, interwoven story. I admire the way she has portrayed Joe Leaphorn now, as a senior who has a mild brain injury from a shooting, but is coping well not only with daily life but with crime resolutions. Leaphorn can speak his native tongue fluently but now stumbles over English, so if he isn't talking to an older member of the Dineh, he needs an interpreter or to use a laptop. As much as anything else, this makes us aware that the old ways are being somewhat lost, the kids are more accustomed to TV and the internet than to ceremonies and storytelling.

Relationships ebb and flow, families fill with love or spite. Colleagues can be your best chance of survival, a pain to work with daily, or your worst nightmare. We get the running story of a baby on the way someday this month, in the searing heat and dry air. And we learn a great deal about the clean environment of pines, Gambel oaks, cottonwoods, and sage. The people here have lived in harmony with the land, revering the mountains and watching for cooling clouds, but today's police drive SUVs and use smartphones. THE TALE TELLER continues a series I have been reading with great absorption for decades, begun by superb author Tony Hillerman and continued in this, her fifth novel, by award-winning reporter Anne Hillerman, his daughter, who lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Sounds like an awesome place to live.

Book Summary

Legendary Navajo policeman Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn takes center stage in this riveting atmospheric mystery from New York Times bestselling author Anne Hillerman that combines crime, superstition, and tradition and brings the desert Southwest vividly alive.

Joe Leaphorn may have retired from the Tribal Police, but he finds himself knee-deep in a perplexing case involving a priceless artifact—a reminder of a dark time in Navajo history. Joe’s been hired to find a missing biil, a traditional dress that had been donated to the Navajo Nation. His investigation takes a sinister turn when the leading suspect dies under mysterious circumstances and Leaphorn himself receives anonymous warnings to beware—witchcraft is afoot.

While the veteran detective is busy working to untangle his strange case, his former colleague Jim Chee and Officer Bernie Manuelito are collecting evidence they hope will lead to a cunning criminal behind a rash of burglaries. Their case takes a complicated turn when Bernie finds a body near a popular running trail. The situation grows more complicated when the death is ruled a homicide, and the Tribal cops are thrust into a turf battle because the murder involves the FBI.

As Leaphorn, Chee, and Bernie draw closer to solving these crimes, their parallel investigations begin to merge . . . and offer an unexpected opportunity that opens a new chapter in Bernie’s life.