Brian Burt's Blog: Work in Progress - Posts Tagged "chee"
Mysteries Told the Navajo Way
At a recent library book sale, my better half managed to pick up half a dozen paperback novels from Tony Hillerman's Navajo Mysteries series, featuring the adventures of Detective Joe Leaphorn and Officer Jim Chee. I think she got all six for three dollars. Talk about a steal! I gobbled them up over the Holidays and felt like they were the best gift Santa could have left under our tree.
Personally, I've always been fascinated by the richness and variety of Native American culture, history, and mythology. I'm a Michigander, so in our neck of the woods, the People of the Three Fires - Ojibwa (Chippewa), Odawa (Ottawa), and Potawatomi tribes - are most prominent. Many of our town, city, and county names are derived from the Anishinaabe language. Although perhaps over-romanticized, I think the central tenets of many Native American tribes to appreciate the beauty of the natural world and seek to maintain a balance with nature appeal to Americans of all stripes.
Tony Hillerman's Navajo Tribal Police mystery stories unfold in a setting very different from the lush, wooded locales of my part of Michigan. These stories are set in the stark, desolate lands of the desert Southwest, beautiful but unforgiving to those who underestimate them. Hillerman's style is a perfect match for the novels' settings and their main characters: the spare, economical prose wastes nothing, cutting to the bone of the tale.
Joe Leaphorn is a stoic, skeptical hero who appreciates the traditions of the Navajo people he serves but takes none of their beliefs at face value. He respects those beliefs but is more likely to attribute evil acts to human failing before supernatural forces. Jim Chee complements Leaphorn in many ways: he studies to be a singer (a shamanic figure who presides over healing rituals) and has a much harder time dismissing the influences of mystical powers that are interwoven with the traditional Navajo world view.
Together (as they are in a number of these novels), Leaphorn and Chee make a fascinating crime-solving team. They share similar gifts for seeing the deep motives behind people's behavior, they do not rush to judgment, and they follow the trail of their criminal prey with a steadfast, unhurried pace that ultimately wears the bad guys down. Their characters are as strong, as solid, and as multilayered as the buttes and mesas that make their jurisdiction so memorable. They're a wonderful contrast to the TV or movie cops who shoot anything that moves while cars crash and buildings explode. Hillerman's Navajo protagonists only need one lethal weapon: their brains.
If you enjoy immersing yourself in another culture, an unfamiliar landscape, and a mystery that mingles the mundane with the magical, you'll love the Navajo Mysteries series. The more time you spend with Detective Leaphorn and Officer Chee, the more you'll feel like you're hanging with old friends who can speak volumes with a few well-chosen words.
Personally, I've always been fascinated by the richness and variety of Native American culture, history, and mythology. I'm a Michigander, so in our neck of the woods, the People of the Three Fires - Ojibwa (Chippewa), Odawa (Ottawa), and Potawatomi tribes - are most prominent. Many of our town, city, and county names are derived from the Anishinaabe language. Although perhaps over-romanticized, I think the central tenets of many Native American tribes to appreciate the beauty of the natural world and seek to maintain a balance with nature appeal to Americans of all stripes.
Tony Hillerman's Navajo Tribal Police mystery stories unfold in a setting very different from the lush, wooded locales of my part of Michigan. These stories are set in the stark, desolate lands of the desert Southwest, beautiful but unforgiving to those who underestimate them. Hillerman's style is a perfect match for the novels' settings and their main characters: the spare, economical prose wastes nothing, cutting to the bone of the tale.
Joe Leaphorn is a stoic, skeptical hero who appreciates the traditions of the Navajo people he serves but takes none of their beliefs at face value. He respects those beliefs but is more likely to attribute evil acts to human failing before supernatural forces. Jim Chee complements Leaphorn in many ways: he studies to be a singer (a shamanic figure who presides over healing rituals) and has a much harder time dismissing the influences of mystical powers that are interwoven with the traditional Navajo world view.
Together (as they are in a number of these novels), Leaphorn and Chee make a fascinating crime-solving team. They share similar gifts for seeing the deep motives behind people's behavior, they do not rush to judgment, and they follow the trail of their criminal prey with a steadfast, unhurried pace that ultimately wears the bad guys down. Their characters are as strong, as solid, and as multilayered as the buttes and mesas that make their jurisdiction so memorable. They're a wonderful contrast to the TV or movie cops who shoot anything that moves while cars crash and buildings explode. Hillerman's Navajo protagonists only need one lethal weapon: their brains.
If you enjoy immersing yourself in another culture, an unfamiliar landscape, and a mystery that mingles the mundane with the magical, you'll love the Navajo Mysteries series. The more time you spend with Detective Leaphorn and Officer Chee, the more you'll feel like you're hanging with old friends who can speak volumes with a few well-chosen words.
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Random musings from a writer struggling to become an author.
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