Native American Fiction Mystery

Though he’s officially retired from the Navajo Tribal Police, Joe Leaphorn occasionally helps his former colleagues Jim Chee and Bernie Manuelito crack particularly puzzling crimes. But there is that rare unsolved investigation that haunts every lawman, including the legendary Leaphorn. Joe still hasn’t let go of his “last case”—a mystery involving a priceless Navajo rug that was supposedly destroyed in a fire. Nine years later, what looks like the same one-of-a-kind rug turns up in a magazine spread, and the man who showed Joe the photo has gone missing.

Against the backdrop of a never-colonized North America, a broken Ojibwe detective embarks on an emotional and twisting journey toward solving two murders, rediscovering family, and finding himself.

Lt. Joe Leaphorn, who can't seem to stay retired, investigates a case that takes him back to his earliest days with the Navajo Tribal Police. When Erwin Totter's trading post burned to the ground back in 1965, the news that Ray Shewnack, a fugitive on the FBI's Most Wanted List, had perished in the blaze drew all available officers to the scene. Joe Leaphorn was pulled away from Grandma Peshlakai's, where he'd gone in hopes of recovering the ten gallons of pinyon sap stolen from her. It was a waste of time, Grandma Peshlakai insisted, since the man was certainly dead.

Hot-blooded Georgiana Stockwell will break a man's heart while he's eating out of her hand. Moving from the East to join her schoolteacher sister in the rugged wilds of Tonto Basin, Arizona, Georgiana makes quite an impression. Despite her sister's best efforts, Georgiana creates a culture clash as her modern, free-spirited personality comes up against the code of the West, the unwritten law of the range that everyone is expected to follow.

Charlie and Thomas Begay find themselves caught up in a dangerous, intrigue-filled adventure involving one of the canyon lands' oldest riddles. Dark secrets are revealed in this fast-paced mystery of a forgotten people.

In the tradition of Tony Hillerman and Joseph Wambaugh comes this suspense thriller reuniting Bureau of Indian Affairs Criminal Investigator Emmett Quanah Parker and FBI Special Agent Anna Turnipseed, two Native American cops torn between their heritage and the law

Dreams tell old man Paul T'Sosi he's dying. So why is Navajo trickster Magpie trying to tell him a far more terrifying secret? Hungry for revenge, Ma'iitsoh Dine', the Navajo Wolf, is out for blood. Summoning his darkest powers, the Witch of Ganado circles tribal investigator Charlie Yazzie's young son and close friends. Some may survive the witch's evil vendetta, but others will die to settle an old score.

When Mexico's bloodiest predator invades the reservation, it's up to Charlie Yazzie and his friends to take charge the Navajo way. Navajo can track prey, but can Charlie, Thomas, and Harley Ponyboy catch the killer before he catches them?

A lost gold mine, a corpse in an abandoned pickup truck, and an eerie wailing heard on Halloween are among the delicious plot elements Tony Hillerman cooks up in his 15th novel featuring Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee. The two Navajo cops, one old and one young—who originally debuted in separate series but have been collaborating for many books now—are among the most engaging, fully human characters in crime fiction. As The Wailing Wind beautifully demonstrates, there's only one Tony Hillerman ... and he's at the top of his game.

Sheriff Zeb Hanks has his hands full when sociopath Jimmie Joe Walker, recently released from an Arizona state prison, masterminds a devious plan to make himself filthy rich. His plan involves Ángel Gomez, a down-on-his-luck half Mescalero Apache/half Mexican. Ángel's alcoholism and far-fetched dreams make him an unwitting dupe in Jimmie Joe's plans, which end up endangering Ángel's own life, as well as the lives of those he loves.

On the banks of the Missouri River, the town of Yellow Earth and the Three Nations reservation prepare for an invasion - the ground beneath their feet is loaded with readily frackable shale oil and the minions of corporate energy are rushing to extract it. Tribal Chairman Harleigh Kildeer welcomes Big Oil with open arms, while county sheriff Will Crowder has to deal with the overnight influx of roughnecks, truckers, drug dealers, and sex workers.

Who owns what is traditionally considered sacred? Can the Catholic Church legally conspire with the federal government to steal the most sacrosanct of Native American holy places? Holes in the Sky, the second in the series Zeb Hanks: Small Town Sheriff with Big Time Troubles, explores these questions in a clash of cultures mixed with mysterious deaths.

Having no choice but to abandon his adopted life and return to his roots, Scarberry finds himself dropped into a situation far more harrowing than he ever could have imagined. Allied with a single sheriff's deputy - a young woman he knew only briefly in his youth who is fighting battles of her own - the two face a network of illegal gun runners, apathetic bureaucracy, and federal agency, ultimately squaring off with the very thing Scarberry's been trying to avoid for so long....

After a rancher finds 10 mutilated bodies at an archaeological dig site on the Navajo Reservation, both Captain Begay of the Navajo Tribal Police and Special Agent Palmer of the FBI become involved...but the case leads Palmer back up to Colorado where five more mutilated bodies and Stella's vehicle have been discovered at a burning cabin. Cole, Stella, and David escape the cabin, heading south. Stella believes David is a natural-born shaman, and knows their only hope of David ever defeating the Ancient Enemy is to find a reclusive shaman named Joe Blackhorn who can help train David.

After a security guard is found dead and another wounded at the Children's Museum of Science and History in Norman, Oklahoma, Detective Monique Blue Hawk and her partner Chris Pierson are summoned to investigate. They find no fingerprints, no footprints, and no obvious means to enter the locked building.

When a hunted military whistleblower and his family need someplace to hide and someone to trust, Toussaint, Montana, is the place, and Gabriel Du Pre the man. The Metis Indian former cattle inspector and sometimes deputy is happy to offer protection, even though he's got his hands full with an ailing granddaughter, a meddling medicine man, and a Kazakh eagle hunter prowling the hills above town. As a guard at a Kabul prison, Hoyt Poe witnessed his fellow soldiers abusing the Afghan inmates. Poe's testimony threatens to expose the military contractor that led the interrogation program.

From Kirk Mitchell comes a riveting suspense thriller in the tradition of Tony Hillerman and Joseph Wambaugh, featuring Bureau of Indian Affairs Criminal Investigator Emmett Quanah Parker and FBI Special Agent Anna Turnipseed, two Native American cops searching for justice between their heritage and the law.

If there's one thing that Bureau of Indian Affairs Investigator Emmett Quanah Parker knows, it's that the dead don't always stay dead. When the corpse of a woman, brutally murdered and bizarrely mutilated, is discovered on Havasupai Nation land, Parker is paired with FBI Special Agent Anna Turnipseed in a hastily assembled task force of two. The two share a mixed Native American ancestry - and little else.

Loki Redmond is positive her grandfather's 100 acre farm in Mississippi will be the perfect place for Jake Savior to heal after the murder of his wife and his banishment from law enforcement before they begin their partnership in Redmond Private Investigations. But fate has other plans. The discovery of a month-old baby and young girl with no memory of her name, running from a man she calls The Devil, plunges them into danger.

FBI Special Agent Anna Turnipseed, a Modoc Indian from California, and Bureau of Indian Affairs Investigator Emmett Parker, a Comanche from Oklahoma, are a team, sent by the Feds wherever there are problems in tribal territory.