Joe Leaphorn, a senior tribal detective, has been trying to solve without success. The bone produces the fatal “corpse sickness.” This bone fragment links three apparently separate killings that Lt. Navajo witches, or skinwalkers, inject bone into the bodies of people they want to kill. Among the shotgun pellets that litter the floor is a small bone pellet. In the morning, as he cleans up his trailer, Chee makes a frightening discovery. Three shotgun blasts tear holes in the trailer just above the bed where Chee was sleeping moments before. For a moment, thinks he sees a shape in the darkness. When his closest neighbor, a feral cat, shoots through the pet door, Chee gets up to peer out the window at what might have scared it so badly. Officer Jim Chee, of the Navajo Tribal Police, tosses and turns one night in the airstream where he lives in the desert. I offer this brief review to encourage others who may not know Hillerman’s work to give it a look. I read it again and found it to be a thoroughly satisfying mystery. As I worked on a recent post, Favorite Fictional Detectives, I realized I didn’t remember the details of Skinwalkers, a key Tony Hillerman novel that I read soon after it was published in 1986.
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