Excellent Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee story about a man killed on a sacred mountain. Or was he killed? A very good read.
Navajo policemen Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee have to find out how and why he had climbed the sacred mountain, SHIP ROCK, and whey he had been killed there, almost seventeen hundred feet above the desert floor?
I love the Leaphorn/Chee books. Insightful to cultural differences. Descriptive of the New Mexico and desert southwest. Recommend reading them all to follow the characters
An excellent Hillerman mystery. Keeps you guessing right up to the end.
12th in the Leaphorn/Chee series, but not important to enjoying the story. Two climbers on the famous Ship Rock chance to look over for another route down and discover the bones of someone who didn't make it. Turns out the man disappeared 11 years ago and no one had a clue where he went. Mystery solved, right? It would have gone into the closed file except someone shoots at a reservation man who happened to be the last guy to see the unlucky climber all those years ago. Now retired, Joe Leaphorn remembers the missing man case and is hired by a corporation to find out what really happened. Chee is supposed to be working cattle rustling, but he'd like to know why Nez got shot at, and exactly what interest does this corporation have in the case? I like how Leaphorn and Chee don't ever really work together, but they work on the same thing from different angles. As always, great descriptions of the country and insight into Navajo culture.
NOTE: this is an ex-library book, I know some people don't like that.
