Interesting Debut
I’ve long been interested in trying the Leaphorn and Chee Mysteries from Tony Hillerman. The setting of the Navajo Reservation sounded interesting, and the covers appealed to me. Yeah, so I do judge books by their covers sometimes. Anyway, I’d heard lots of good things about them, but I just didn’t have time to dive in until I was looking for a shortish audio book recently, so I snagged The Blessing Way, the first in the series. I’m glad I finally started the series.
Bergen McKee is a professor of anthropology at the University of New Mexico. He’s been working on a book on the superstitions of the Navajo, specifically the legends of witches in the tribes. He’s using the summer to conduct more interviews on the reservation, which also means connecting up with his college friend, Joe Leaphorn, a Navajo Tribal Police Lieutenant.
McKee arrives as Leaphorn is trying to track down a young man, Luis Horseman, who has gone into hiding somewhere in the desert for fear he has killed a man. While McKee starts his initial investigations, Leaphorn goes with him to spread the word that the other man in the attack was only injured. But then, Luis Horseman turns up dead miles from where Leaphorn thought he would be. Meanwhile, McKee gets a lead on a suspected witch on the reservation that summer. Are these things connected?
For a series debut, this is very interesting. After I finished the book, I saw that McKee was originally the main character and Leaphorn’s role was expanded later. That actually makes sense to me since McKee is on the page without Leaphorn for much of the book. Meanwhile, the other lead character of the series is still a few books away from showing up. Mainly, I find this interesting trivia and a glimpse at how characters and a series can evolve over time.
However, this background is needed to understand one reason why it took me a little while to get into the book. There’s some set up to get McKee to the reservation that I’m not completely sure we needed. Meanwhile, I was trying to figure out who all the characters were and how they fit into the series.
It also means that Leaphorn doesn’t feel like a fully realized character yet. He was interesting enough that I will be back for the next in the series, but McKee and some of the other characters McKee spends most of his time interacting with felt the most real.
One thing I was expecting was an interesting look at Navajo culture, and I got that. This was one aspect that I really enjoyed. While Leaphorn and McKee both have different takes on the beliefs that impact the case, they still treat the beliefs with respect.
And no, there isn’t anything supernatural going on here, even with the talk about witches. So if, like me, you generally avoid books with heavy supernatural elements, you can rest easy when you pick up this book.
Once the plot did get going, I was engrossed. And yes, I also saw how some of the characters who appeared on the periphery fit into the story. Leaphorn has some interesting questions to puzzle out as he works on his case. Meanwhile, McKee finds himself in some unexpected danger, which completely hooked me.
The book originally came out in 1970, which means some elements are dated. It also means that the characters are missing some technology we take for granted now. I think that might have changed the story some. Then again, depending on how remote they are, it might not. Either way, this is good background to have when you start to read the book.
Since this isn’t one of my usual cozies, I went in expecting a little more content than I would normally get. I was pleasantly surprised to see that we didn’t really get any of that. Yes, this is more of a police procedural thriller combo than a cozy, but it does it without adding in the content we usually find in those genres. We’ll see if that continues as the series goes along.
I mentioned at the start that I read this via audiobook. George Guidall is the narrator who read it to me, and I was quite excited when I saw his name. I’m familiar with his work on another series, and I like him as a narrator. I wasn’t disappointed with his performance here.
I’m glad I’ve finally started this series and look forward to seeing what all lies ahead of me as I read more about Joe Leaphorn. If you haven’t started the series yet, you’ll be glad you made time to read The Blessing Way.
Check out the rest of the Leaphorn and Chee Mysteries.
I think I may have read this in the distant past, but I've been thinking about working my way through the series. I have done some fantasy travel to the Grand Canyon area this year and hope to do it for real, some day. This feels like a good series to gently lay a foundation of local knowledge.
ReplyDelete