Skeleton Man

A young Navajo man named Billy Tuve is accused of robbing a trading post, but his story, that an old man in the canyon gave him the diamond he sold, points toward a plane crash from decades past and the gems that went missing with it. Sergeant Jim Chee and Officer Bernadette Manuelito investigate while the retired Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn works the case from his own angle, and the trail leads to the Grand Canyon's tiered cliffs and the realm of the Hopi Lord of Death. Tony Hillerman's seventeenth Leaphorn and Chee novel weaves Hopi mythology through the mystery with his characteristic respect for the cultures involved.

George Guidall has been the definitive narrator for the Leaphorn and Chee series, and his command of the Southwestern landscape and the series' ensemble is as reliable as ever. His patience with the mystery's unhurried revelation mirrors Hillerman's own prose rhythm, and the Grand Canyon setting comes to life in the narration with genuine grandeur. At just under six and a half hours, this is a tight, satisfying late-series entry.