I'm down to nearly the end of the Tony Hillerman Navajo mysteries. The Sinister Pig is the antepenultimate Tony Hillerman. I'm not really looking forward to finishing the series.
 I seem to be finishing off a lot of dead-author series these days: van der Wetering, Van Gulik, Gur, Gill, and -- in SF -- Banks. Makes my reading-for-pleasure bleaker ( Read more... )

         In Tony Hillerman's Navajo mystery novel The Wailing Wind the hero (spoiler alert) wins the heart of a dark-haired woman named Bernadette. What's not to like???
         Okay, the grimaces on page 8 and 27 are a problem, but that's way below Hillerman's usual quota.
         There's also the issue that the book is from the later period ( Read more... )

          In the Janwillem van de Wetering novel I just finished, the running joke is how all the various agencies and police departments trip over each other and interact; and it's also a running joke in this one: Tony Hillerman's Hunting Badger. 
       This is another fine entry in the Navajo Mystery series. The story was inspired by, and ( Read more... )

          I took Tony Hillerman's The First Eagle with me on my recent trip. It was his 15th novel.
          Okay, let's get the grimace count out of the way first. Eight. Pages 2, 3, 7, 36, 100, 159, 247 and 257 of my paperback edition. The man probably would have lived another six or seven years if he'd dropped the habit, but what can you say?
    ( Read more... )

So, finally, my tenth book of the year, a Tony Hillerman I'm pretty sure I never read.  Sacred Clowns, and despite two small slips in the narration, it's another fine one.

I just learned today, looking at the Wikipedia article, that Hillerman was strongly influenced by Arthur Upfield's Napoleon Bonaparte mysteries (not that ( Read more... )

Enjoying my brief freedom to read for pleasure, I decided to read a couple of Tony Hillermans, starting with Coyote Waits.  I've been reading Hillerman in order, and mostly finding out that I'd forgotten that I'd already read the early ones.  And finding out that all I remembered were scenes of Navajo life, and not the plots.

( Read more... )

Oh, when will I find a Tony Hillerman I haven't read before??

I began the new year reading for relaxation, and picked up the next book, Talking God, and quickly realized that once again I'd already read it, and once again I couldn't remember the plot.  Officers Leaphorn and Chee are worrying at a case from two different angles, ( Read more... )

            With the reading of Tony Hillerman's Skinwalkers, I'm only about 20 years behind in the Navajo mystery series.  This is the one where Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn meet for the first time.  Leaphorn's wife is gravely ill, and somebody's trying to whack Chee.

Yes, just like last time, I realize I'd read this one before, but couldn ( Read more... )

            Tony Hillerman's Navajo mystery novels are one of the eleven different series that I'm trying to keep up with.  I read a couple of them before I got married, and Bernadette had several in her library, and for some reason I managed to skip around and ... well, I'm not entirely sure which ones I've read and which I haven't.  Solution?  I ( Read more... )