Search - The Shaman Sings (Charlie Moon, Bk 1)

This was an excellent book. It had me guessing till the very end. It is definately a keeper if I ever find a copy of my own.

Fisrt in the series. Set in SW Colorado, good native American mystery along the lines of Hillerman.

You can't put this book down, once you start to read it. Keeps you guessing until the end.

Because of the Southwestern setting and the Native American characters, the temptation is to compare this book with Tony Hillerman; but the tone here is considerably more lightweight than a Hillerman novel. A graduate student in physics has discovered something extremely valuable in her off-hours work - something that gets her killed. Daisy Perika, a local Ute woman (must be the shaman of the title), has had some visions that will help the police. This book says it is a Charlie Moon mystery, although we only see Charlie in a couple brief appearances; I don't know why it isn't a Daisy Perika mystery or a Scott Parrish (he's a chief of police) mystery, since we spend much of the story with him. Anyway it's a nice enough mystery with a lot of shifting to various POVs - the shaman, the murderer, another criminal, a reporter and so forth. Short scenes and fairly snappy dialogue, the characters are mostly well realized with a couple of stereotyped exceptions, and a decent sense of place. A bit of woo-woo, a bit of humor, and some gratuitous killing all in one package. If you are a fan of the southwest or Native Americans in mysteries you might want to take
a look. If you like it, there are plenty more in the series.