The Wailing Wind

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Summary: Legends of the Navajo
Review: The Wailing Wind
Tony Hillerman
ISBN 0-06-019444-8

Tony Hillerman's novels featuring Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee of the Navajo police have familiarized people around the world with the culture of the Navajo and the desert Southwest in which they live. Last year, while browsing in a bookstore in a medieval town in Germany, I came across a German language edition of one of Hillerman's books.

To those whose primary interest in Hillerman's work relates to his use of the Navajo culture in his stories, "The Wailing Wind" does not disappoint. In this book, as an example, one finds that Officer Bernadette Manuelito's adherence to the Navajo belief of avoiding contact with the dead leads her to blunder in an investigation. But she re-establishes her credibility by using information from her uncle, who is a shaman with a unique knowledge of native plants.

It is interesting how Hillerman constructs the characters of Chee and Leaphorn. Both men are effective policemen, but they are very different men. Chee is younger, more impetuous, more error-prone, and less sure of himself. In one passage, Chee pretends to study the menu carefully in the Navajo Inn, to preserve his pride, because in the end he always orders a hamburger. Chee is also more a traditional Navajo than Leaphorn, who has earned a master's degree in Anthropology at Arizona State University. But Chee, who has studied with his uncle to become a chaman in earlier books uses that knowledge here to predict a suspect's likely behavior. Leaphorn is older, retired, more self-confident, steadier, and exhibits the deductive reasoning powers of a Navajo Sherlock Holmes. For example, when Chee is giving Leaphorn some information about a crime, he notes that one never has to explain the ramifications of a set of circumstances to Leaphorn. He always sees them.

Those who have followed the vicissitudes of Jim Chee's love life through several novels, with two earlier girlfriends, may take interest in the emergence in this book of Bernadette Manuelito as his new, would-be love interest. Leaphorn, the Legendary Lieutenant, on the other hand, remains aloof. His friendship with Professor Louisa Bourbonette seems destined to stay platonic. Leaphorn still remembers little things about his Navajo wife who died some years before.

In "The Wailing Wind", Hillerman, as always, utilizes his considerable skill in constructing a plot of seemingly unrelated, intriguing threads of events that he adroitly weaves together at the end. This book features a lost gold mine, a beautiful, vanished wife, a Halloween story of the supernatural, and two murders. The construction of this plot is certainly the equal of most in Hillerman's books, though its resolution is probably not the equal of his best. In the conclusion, Leaphorn seems to make some uncharacteristic mistakes. But it is good to read about Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee again. This book takes one further into the development of these well-drawn characters, and about such characters one always wants to read more.

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Summary: Nice, mellow read
Review: I enjoyed the latest installment in this series. In previous books, I was frustrated by the lack of communication between the people who were investigating. Hillerman would have two characters come to the same conclusion from different angles. In this book, he allows more communication between the detectives so that their efforts compliment eachother.

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Summary: The World From a Different Point of View
Review: Terrific! Stayed up most of the night to finish it in one go!

No mindless or gratuitous violence. Well thought out plots and down-to-earth dialog. And best of all, no passages I'm not old enough (at 60) to read without embarassment. Great read!

The biggest problem with reading a Hillerman book is that you have to wait another year for the next one.

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Summary: He's baaaack--sort of
Review: I am a long-time Hillerman fan who was deeply disappointed in the 3 books preceding The Wailing Wind. I found the language and characters so simplistic, Tony's usual poetic description so non-existent, and facts so inconsistent with those in prior novels that I truly thought (and still think!) those novels were ghost-written. (Or perhaps I should say, "Chindi-written"?)

Under the circumstances, I was reluctant to even begin reading The Wailing Wind, but there I was, at the car wash, with only this novel available. . . .my reaction? Relief! Okay, this is NOT a great mystery, but the glorious descriptive touches have returned, as has Hillerman's ability to present his characters through their actions and reflections, rather than via the curt authorial explication which characterized the three novels that came before this.

That being said, this book definitely has its faults. The ending is disappointing and lacks the complexity that the situation requires. Of course, it's difficult to tie up all the loose ends when you've made the mistake of having TOO MANY DETECTIVES: Joe Leaphorn, Jim Chee, AND Bernie Manuelito?? To resolve all of their visions and theories is just too cumbersome. The books that featured Jim Chee OR Joe Leaphorn exclusively were much more satisfying and concise.

What I found most troubling, however, were the contextual inconsistencies: Janet Pete's being described as a "perfect beauty", and the inference that she's an Anglo. The earlier novels make it quite clear that she's a Navajo, and is "classy" rather than beautiful. More puzzling, Chee's First love, Mary Landon, is described as being from Wisconsin, while the earlier novels clearly establish that she hails from New England.
Has Hillerman decided to change the background of these characters? Has he simply forgotten his first descriptions? (Okay, we're all entitled to our "senior moments", but aren't his editors susposed to guard against blatant contradictions in fact?)

I sincerely hope these flaws can be explained away by forgetfulness on the author's part or by editorial error, because I truly want to believe that the Tony Hillerman I knew has returned in The Wailing Wind.

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Summary: Pleasant visit with old friends
Review: Reading Tony Hillerman's latest Leaphorn/Chee mystery is like sitting around a campfire with old friends. It's wonderful to catch up on each other's lives, share a few chuckes, and recall why you enjoy being together. But it's not the best way to meet new people.

Hillerman's books have always been more about Navajo lore and the vanishing-point vistas of a lightly populated land than about solving crimes. In the process, we've come to really care about Leaphorn and Chee, and the people and places that define their lives. This book has the feel of being the penultimate in the series--not quite the end, but close to it. The real question isn't who killed the gold miner whose body is discovered in the opening chapter; it's whether Chee will ever be truly happy, and whether Leaphorn will settle gracefully into retirement. Nor does Hillerman really have anything new to say about the Navajos; he's said it beautifully in more than a dozen prior books.

If you already love Leaphorn and Chee and the Southwest, you don't need my urging to read this book. If you're new to Hillerman, start with an earlier book in the series. Then come back for a nice campfire chat with your new, old friends.

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Summary: Very disappointing
Review: I have been a Hillerman fan for years, but this latest effort feels tired. Nothing new in character development and the plot was of little interest.

How many books has Jim Chee been thinking about starting something with Office Manuelito? At least 3? Add this one to the list. I would not recommend this book.

Rating:
Summary: The Wailing Wind
Review: What a fun read. Tense and exciting, as usual. Our favorite characters are all here being themselves in the intriguing culture Hillerman has made real for us. I actually read it in one sitting! I could not stop. A good mystery with a solid conclusion...or is it? Pray for more.

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Summary: Quick read
Review: The central focus of THE WAILING WIND is Jim Chee's love interest, Bernadette Manuelito. When she investigates an abandoned truck, she finds a dead man sprawled in the cab. She doesn't notice any blood, so she assumes he's just another drunk. Bernadette is also a traditionalist, who's worried about the chindi (evil spirits), so she's reluctant to get too close to the body. As a result, she doesn't secure the crime scene and she takes a important piece of evidence with her when she leaves.
Sergeant Jim Chee tries to protect her when it's discovered the dead man had a bullet hole in his back. He calls on Joe Leaphorn to return the snuff box full of sand and placer dust to the crime scene where the FBI can find it. Later, we find out that the dead man was looking for the Golden Calf mine, just as another murder victim had before his death. This is another one of Leaphorn's unsolved cases. Wiley Denton, who'd confessed to the original murder (self defense), tries to hire Leaphorn to find his wife, Linda, who went missing the same day he killed Marvin McKay, a con man who'd been trying to sell him a map to the Golden Calf mine.
Tony Hillerman has become somewhat of a formulaic writer in his old age. Jim Chee's plot line usually involves a woman; Joe Leaphorn, although he's retired, is called in to solve the case, usually connected to one he's been trying to solve for years. There's also usually a Navajo shaman involved, in this case James Peshlakai, a signer of important curing rituals. For me, it's always been about the rituals, The Blessing Way and others, and in the last couple of Hillerman books, Tony's ignored them. Maybe because Chee is no longer studying to become a shaman. In this book, The Big Star Way is central to the plot, but Hillerman never gets around to showing us how it's done. There is one thing that hasn't deteriorated, however, and that's how well Hillerman uses the Navajo Indian Reservation as a setting. There's a map inside the front cover and on the back, and I kept paging back and forth, trying to find place names. Maps are also incidental to the plot.
There's a little teaser at the end, involving Bernadette Manuelito, giving us something to look forward to in the next one. Think wedding. One thing about Hillerman; he reads faster than Grisham or King. I read this in two days and most books usually take me a week. I hope we don't have to wait another two years for the next one.

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Summary: Sorry Tony
Review: I love Tony's writing. He does especially well with his descriptions of the "Big Res". This book does little to describe the characters or the land. The sentence structure is awkward and the editing poorly done. This is not a book I will reread. To say I was disappointed is putting it mildly.

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Summary: Nice to be back in Navajo country
Review: Officer Bernadette Manuelito had become a full-fledged member of Tony Hillerman's cast of characters, allowing us to see events through her eyes as well as those of Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn and expanding the range of emotions and insights to be explored. The story of "The Wailing Woman" is not terribly complex -- a white man has been found shot to death on the Navajo reservation and circumstances tie the crime to an older unsolved mystery: why did the beautiful young wife of a wealthy local oil man disappear at the same time her husband killed a conman who was trying to cheat him over information about a long-lost fabled gold mine? It was a mystery which troubled Leaphorn even in retirement, and he cannot resist the opportunity to again try to find the answer.

This novel does not delve so deep into Indian religion and culture as some of Hillerman's books, but as usual his characters are complex and subtle. And, as has been the case with most of the novels in this series for several years, the personal stories of his characters evolve a little further.