Hillerman's fans have another hit to celebrate, another surprising mysterious adventure. It may be a toss-up as to what draws them most strongly: varied, detailed, and fascinating revelations of contemporary culture; or compelling, complex, and original murder mysteries. Against the backdrop of the puzzle of the long-ago vanished Anasazi people, a complex mystery emerges in which Anglo culture and values pull against those of the Navajo, resulting in a bizarre series of murders solved by the Navajo Tribal Police. Fast, literate, absorbing reading with unique settings and characters, this title is for lovers of adventure as well as mystery.
There are three things one can expect from a Hillerman mystery: a story that would make no sense without its rock-solid base of Navaho culture; a tale that moves within the rhythms of real time; and an intricate plot that calls for the particular skills of his two detectives, Jim Chee, shaman and officer of the Navaho Tribal Police, and Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn, older, slower, and wiser. Talking God has all of these things in a plot that absolutely defies summary. Leaphorn and Chee track different paths for different crimes and both end up in the wilds of Washington, D.C., ostensibly on vacation.
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. But the hungry and mythical trickster Coyote is waiting, as always, in the shadows to add a strange and deadly new twist.
No one loved the murdered Dame Myra Mason, long-ago plaything of now senile Benedict Cotterel. Myra's estranged, illegitimate daughter plans a scathing biography; Benedict's dangerously stupid legitimate daughter blames the woman for stealing her father; and Myra's new husband admits to marrying for career advancement. Tucked away upstairs in the Old Rectory, Maudsley, Benedict himself supposedly knows nothing. Barnard shows rare form as usual, investing his English village world with memorable class types, sly quirks, and supporting characters, all limned in masterfully efficient prose.
From The Ashes, written by Hugo Award-winning author Timothy Zahn, sets the scene for the events chronicled in the movie Terminator Salvation, revealing the full story behind John Connor, the man fated to lead the human resistance against Skynet and its army of Terminators. In post-Judgment Day LA, two lost kids named Kyle and Star keep watch for Terminators; a jaded Marine struggles to keep his rag-tag community together in the face of unrelenting danger; and John and Kate Connor assemble their Resistance team for a brutal assault on a deadly enemy.
