Retired Navaho Tribal Police Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn just can't stay away from the office.
He has asked for a little assistance when a young Hopi is suspected of robbery and murder.
Seems that Billy Tuve was trying to pawn a twenty-thousand dollar diamond for twenty bucks
when the pawnbroker became suspicious and notified the local cops. There had been a recent
local holdup and murder involving diamonds and evidence pointed to Billy as the culprit.
Billy Tuve had suffered brain damage in a horse-related accident as a young boy and is
generally regarded by those who know him as being somewhat childlike and incapable of such
a vicious act.
There are other stories and legends in the local area that tend to support Billy's
claim that the diamond was given to him by a strange old hermit who lived on sacred Hopi
land at the bottom of the Grand Canyon and Joe Leaphorn asks Police Sergeant Jim Chee
to look into it to see if they can establish Billy Tuve's innocence.
News of large and valuable diamonds surfacing around the Grand Canyon sends up a flag
for Joanna Craig, the illegitimate daughter of a diamond merchant who was killed in a
plane crash over the Canyon some fifty years earlier. Her father's fortune has been claimed
in the name of a foundation run by a ruthless and dishonest lawyer and if Joanna can recover
any of her father's skeleton, the DNA match should prove her to be the rightful heir.
But the crooked lawyer has heard about these discoveries, too, and sends his own mercenaries
to make sure that no evidence of Joanna's birthright leaves the floor of the Canyon.
When Jim Chee, his fiancée Bernie Manuelito, Joanna Craig, and the hired guns all converge
on the same area at the same time, you can imagine the fireworks. Throw in a sudden violent
thunderstorm and you add another dimension to the challenge.
This is Tony Hillerman's seventeenth offering in the Leaphorn/Chee
series and the tales continue to be entertaining as well as educational
in the ways of Native Americans. It's a good book that flows well
and tells an easy-to-follow story.
Reviews of other titles in this series
Skinwalkers
#1 (Tony Hillerman)
Dance
of the Dead #2 (Tony Hillerman)
People
of Darkness #4 (Tony Hillerman)
Thief
in Time #8 (Tony Hillerman)
Skeleton
Man #17 (Tony Hillerman)
The
Shape Shifter #18 (Tony Hillerman)
Rock
with Wings (#1 Anne Hillerman)
Song
of the Lion (#3 Anne Hillerman)