The Fallen Man

Human bones, undisturbed for over a decade, rest on a ledge beneath the peak of Ship Rock on the Navajo Reservation. Three hundred miles away, an old canyon guide is shot by a sniper. Recently retired Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn believes the skeleton and the shooting are connected to an old case he was never able to close, but his former partner Jim Chee is too busy with active investigations to pursue a cold trail, until violence suddenly makes the case personal.

George Guidall's narration of the Leaphorn and Chee novels captures Tony Hillerman's Navajo landscape with particular authority. His voice gives the reservation's geography a physical reality that grounds the mystery's more introspective passages, and his portrayal of Leaphorn's methodical intelligence suits the character's careful, unhurried approach to investigation. Guidall brings the same respect to the Navajo cultural details that Hillerman himself brought: neither exoticizing nor flattening them into mere background.