Part of Leaphorn & Chee, book 4
First published 1991
Sergeant Jim Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police faces a puzzle that defies logic. A dying man becomes a murder victim. A wealthy woman offers three thousand dollars for a box of stolen rocks. Strange events pull Chee deeper into the Bad Country of the Southwest, where survival demands everything he has. An assassin waits in that unforgiving landscape, guarding secrets thirty years in the making. Greed sparked the original crime. Blood has kept it alive. The desert will decide who lives and who dies. Chee enters this deadly territory alone, knowing that only one man will emerge alive. In Tony Hillerman's fourth Leaphorn and Chee novel, the harsh beauty of Navajo country becomes both sanctuary and trap for a cop who must solve the past to survive the present.
Genres: fiction, mystery, crime, thriller
Vibes: atmospheric, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: amateur-sleuth, lone-hero
Setting: Navajo Country, Southwest
Period: 20th-Century
304 pages · Mass Market Paperback · HarperTorch