Native Mystery Fiction

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.

An old man's hazy memory and a Polaroid snapshot are all Chee has to go on, but they are enough to send him deep into an underworld of murder and revenge when a shootout erupts between two strangers at the Shiprock Wash-O-Mat. One man dies, and the other drives off but not before showing old Joseph Joe a photograph of the man he is looking for. It's not much of a lead for Sergeant Chee, but it's enough to put him on the killer's trail.

The car fire didn’t kill Navajo Tribal Policeman Delbert Nez—a bullet did. And the old man in possession of the murder weapon is a whiskey-soaked shaman named Ashie Pinto. Officer Jim Chee is devastated by the slaying of his good friend Del and confounded by the prime suspect’s refusal to utter a single word of confession or denial. Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn believes there is much more to this outrage than what appears on the surface as he and Jim Chee set out to unravel a complex weave of greed and death that involves a historical find and a lost fortune.

At a moonlit Indian ruin where "thieves of time" ravage sacred ground in the name of profit, a noted anthropologist vanishes while on the verge of making a startling, history-altering discovery. Amid stolen goods and desecrated bones, two corpses are discovered, shot by bullets fitting the gun of the missing scientist. There are modern mysteries buried in despoiled ancient places, and Navajo Tribal Policemen Leaphorn and Chee must plunge into the past to unearth an astonishing truth and a cold-hearted killer.

Early 1800s. Thomasina Trelora is on her way to the colonies. Her fate: to be married to a clergyman she's never met. As the Australian coastline comes into view a storm wrecks the ship and leaves her lying on the rocks, near death. She's saved by an Aboriginal man who carries her to the door of a grand European house, Willowbrae. Tom is now free to be whoever she wants to be, and a whole new life opens up to her. But as she's drawn deeper into the intriguing life of this grand estate, she discovers that things aren't quite as they seem.

The Mighty Muskrats are off to the city to have fun at the Exhibition Fair. But when Chickadee learns about Grandpa’s little sister, who was scooped up by the government and adopted out to strangers without her parents’ permission many years ago, the Mighty Muskrats have a new mystery to solve. Once in the bright lights of the big city, the cousins get distracted, face off with bullies, meet some heroes and unlikely teachers, and learn many of the difficulties of life in the city, as well as hard truths about their country’s treatment of First Nations people.

This James Lee Burke novel, featuring Son Holland - the great-grandfather of Burke's Billy Bob Holland - as he flees a Louisiana prison camp with a Native American woman and a fellow prisoner in tow, is now available in audio.

Henry Park has spent his entire life trying to become a true American—a native speaker. But even as the essence of his adopted country continues to elude him, his Korean heritage seems to drift further and further away. Park's harsh Korean upbringing has taught him to hide his emotions, to remember everything he learns, and most of all to feel an overwhelming sense of alienation. In other words, it has shaped him as a natural spy.

The ritual killing of a young Apache girl on a reservation in rural Arizona takes the listener through many complex layers of relationships between Apache and Anglo cultures. The myth and spiritual fabric of the Apache community pulls Zeb Hanks, a small town sheriff, through a personal journey, making the murder not just a crime to solve but a cathartic passage. The dead never leave us but they do whisper ghost stories that bring the past back to life. Jake Dablo is a drunken, washed up lawman because of his inability to solve the murder of his only granddaughter.

Her name is Renee Blackbear, but what most people call the 19-year-old Ojibwe woman is Cash. She lived all her life in Fargo, sister city to Minnesota’s Moorhead, just downriver from the Cities. She has one friend, the Sheriff Wheaton. He pulled her from her mother’s wrecked car when she was three. Since then, Cash navigated through foster homes and at 13 was working farms, driving trucks.

Joe Leaphorn may have retired from the Tribal Police, but he finds himself knee-deep in a perplexing case involving a priceless artifact - a reminder of a dark time in Navajo history. Joe’s been hired to find a missing biil, a traditional dress that had been donated to the Navajo Nation. His investigation takes a sinister turn when the leading suspect dies under mysterious circumstances and Leaphorn himself receives anonymous warnings to beware - witchcraft is afoot.

A snowmelt has sent floodwaters down to the fields of the Red River Valley, dragging the body of an unidentified Native woman into the town of Ada. The only evidence the medical examiner recovers is a torn piece of paper inside her bra: a hymnal written in English and Ojibwe. Cash Blackbear, a 19-year-old Ojibwe woman, sometimes helps Sheriff Wheaton, her guardian, on his investigations. Now she knows her search for justice for this anonymous victim will take her to the White Earth Reservation, a place she once called home.

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.

Tony Hillerman's best-selling reservation series occupies a unique place in the world of mystery novels. By combining Native American lore and history with suspenseful crime stories, he enlightens and entertains his many fans. Hunting Badger takes you to the Navajo reservation where police sergeant Jim Chee is facing a thorny dilemma. One year ago, Sgt. Chee was part of an FBI search for two cop killers. The men were never caught, and Chee has always blamed police rivalry for the failure. Now several commandos have robbed a casino on the Ute reservation.

Inside Alaska's biggest national park, surrounding the town of Niniltna, a gold mining company has started buying up land. The residents of the Park, are uneasy. "But gold is up to nine hundred dollars an ounce," is the refrain of Talia Macleod, the popular Alaskan skiing champ the company hired to improve their relations with Alaskans. And she promises much needed jobs to the locals. But before she can make her way to every village in the area to make her case at town meetings and village breakfasts, there are two murders—one a long-standing mine opponent, and Ms. Macleod herself.

Once a land of Pueblo dwellers, the town of San Geronimo Peak, New Mexico, is prime ski country. PI Howard Moon Deer and ex-cop Jack Wilder are headed there to meet their first client - a former US senator and the ski slope's owner. Instead, they find his body - and a murder case to solve.

They are just about as bad and evil as outlaw gangs come. But in the end, they finally go straight.

The unsolved murder of a farm family haunts the small, white, off-reservation town of Pluto, North Dakota. The vengeance exacted for this crime and the subsequent distortions of truth transform the lives of Ojibwe living on the nearby reservation and shape the passions of both communities for the next generation.

From the best-selling author of Riders of the Purple Sage, comes another classic Western tale. In the spirit and glory of a classic Western, and published exactly as the author originally intended, Knights of the Range, is one of Zane Grey's swiftest and most exciting novels.

When a car bomb kills a young man in the Shiprock High School parking lot, Officer Bernadette Manuelito discovers that the intended victim was a mediator for a multimillion-dollar development planned at the Grand Canyon. But what seems like an act of ecoterrorism turns out to be something far more nefarious and complex. Piecing together the clues, Bernadette and her husband, Sergeant Jim Chee, uncover a scheme to disrupt the negotiations and inflame tensions between the Hopi and Dine tribes.