Western Mysteries Like Hillerman

In his newest novel The Shape Shifter, Tony Hillerman returns to the subject of Navaho “wolves” or witches, that he so ably plumbed in such novels as People of Darkness and Skinwalkers. The Navaho word for witches translates variously as skinwalkers or shape shifters, depending on how literally one transliterates. Hillerman is deeply versed in Navaho culture. Usually, most things that he says in his books are correct. That’s what makes them so fascinating.

The legendary Navaho witches are evil people among the Navaho who engage in witchcraft for their own ends. Greed and selfishness are the antitheses of the correct Navaho way of living. In the Navaho creation myth, when the people climbed up the hollow reed from the flooded third world that they had destroyed to this fourth world, the “glittering world,” they left such evils as selfishness and greed behind them. One of the Navaho gods sent a diving bird back to retrieve the bundle which contained, he told the bird, “the ways to make money,” and thus you can see how, in Navaho culture, love of money is indeed the root of all evil.

Hillerman says that you can recognize Navaho witches, those who engage in evil and witchcraft, as people who have more than they need but their kinfolks are hungry. Witches can change their form, kind of like werewolves but at will, to several different predatory animals such as wolves and owls, an apt metaphor for the villain in the story, a man who changes his identity whenever he’s betrayed or killed too many people.

This particular Hillerman mystery centers on Joe Leaphorn, though Detective/Shaman Jim Chee and his new wife, Bernadette (Manuelito) Chee, make cameo appearances.

If you like The Shape Shifter, try other Tony Hillerman books.

Novels featuring Joe Leaphorn:

• The Shape Shifter (cameo by Jim Chee)
• Skeleton Man
• Dance Hall of the Dead (Zuni – not considered as accurate as Hillerman’s Navaho books)
• The Blessing Way
• Listening Woman
• The Fallen Man

Novels featuring Jim Chee:

• The Dark Wind
• The First Eagle
• People of Darkness
• The Ghostway
• Talking God

Novels featuring both Leaphorn and Chee:

• The Wailing Wind
• The Sinister Pig (and Bernie Manuelito)
• Skinwalkers
• A Thief of Time
• Hunting Badger
• Sacred Clowns
• Coyote Waits

In addition to the Hillerman books, The Haunted Mesa by Louis L’Amour is a semi-fantasy book that draws extensively on the Navaho lore about the Anasazi, a prehistoric group of people who lived in the Arizona area before the Navaho arrived.

In Comanche Moon by Larry McMurtry, his Indian characters are more internally Native American than in any of his other books. Sometimes, I feel like McMurtry’s Indians are just white men playing with feathers, like that Italian guy in old Westerns and the anti-littering commercial. Here, they’re more alien to white folks, (but more like, ahem, my relatives, who are Comanche and Chiracua Apache.) Comanche Moon is the sequel to Dead Man's Walk and a prequel to the much-read Lonesome Dove. In Moon, McMurtry fills in the missing chapters in the Call and McCrae saga.

In Fencing the Sky by James Galvin, a rancher kills a land developer and is pursued by lawmen on horseback into the central basin of Wyoming. While it’s more cowboy than Indian, Fencing the Sky a bittersweet portrayal of ranching life vs. land grubbers in the modern West.

For more series, try this article about a series you should read while waiting for Harry Potter 7: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

For more books with fascinating characters, try these books like American Psycho.

For more information on getting ideas for writing your own books, try this blog post.

For more books about the other kind of Indians (or at least their food,) check out this article.

For more highly plotted mystery-thriller books like The Da Vinci Code, try these books.

Thanks for reading,

TK Kenyon

Author of Rabid: A Novel, which is about neither cowboys nor Indians, but will be published by Kunati Books in April, 2007.

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