Tag Archives: Anne Hillerman

Mystery Monday 9/4/23

A late edition Mystery Monday post because I’ve been distracted by various and sundry. I’ve meant this for more than one previous Monday. Not gonna miss another.

Having pretty thoroughly explored the British Queens of Crime as well as (the American) Ellery Queen, I’ve turned to new pastures: the Butch Karp / Marlene Ciampi stories by Robert K. Tanenbaum and the Matthew Scudder stories by Lawrence Block. And French author Maurice Lablanc!

Plus, I’m disgruntled by Dark Winds, an AMC TV series that (too loosely, IMO) adapts two novels from the Navajo Tribal Police series by Tony Hillerman.

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Joe, Jim and Bernie

Yá’át’ééh! Fans of the Hillerman books will immediately recognize the three names in the title as Joe Leaphorn, Jim Chee, and Bernadette Manuelito (a relatively new addition who doesn’t yet have her own Wiki page). All three are (fictional) police officers working for the (real) Navajo Tribal Police in the American southwest.

I have to call them just “the Hillerman books” now, because after father Tony Hillerman died, daughter Anne Hillerman took up the series and has so far contributed five very worthy stories of her own. (Her vision of the series puts Bernie Manuelito front and center and thus adds fresh air to the 18 books her father wrote.)

I’m a fan of detective novels, especially murder mystery detective novels, and these are without question my second favorite mystery books of all time.

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