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- The Skeleton Man
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- Author: Tony Hillerman
- Reviewer: Judith Woolcock Colombo
- Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
- Format: Adult, Fiction, Hardcover, 241 Pages, 2004, $25.95
- ISBN: 0060563443
- Rating: * * * * Quills
- www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/asin/0060563443/scriquil
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- In 1976, I went to the Brooklyn Museum to see an exhibition of American Landscape Art. This show was part of the country’s bicentennial celebration of America’s birth as an independent nation. I was struck by the compelling beauty of many of the paintings; especially those depicting the majestic mountains, sun-swept valleys and plateaus, and deep canyons of the Southwest. My interest in the beauty of the Southwest was again awakened while reading Tony Hillerman's latest mystery. Skeleton Man is not only a good story, but it is also a tour through one of Southwest's most spectacular landscapes: the Grand Canyon.
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- The novel opens in the Navajo Inn diner. Retired Navajo Tribal Police lieutenant Joe Leaphorn is narrating his latest post-retirement adventure to Captain Pinto and some of his other friends over coffee. Leaphorn tells of coming out of retirement to help investigate what he thinks is a simple trading post robbery. Billy Tuve, a simpleminded young man, is blamed for the crime in which the store operator was killed and some jewelry stolen. Billy becomes a suspect in the robbery when he tries to sell a diamond worth thousands for twenty dollars. Billy insists that he did not commit the robbery; an old man, who lives at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, gave him the diamond in exchange for his knife. His cousin, Deputy Sheriff Cowboy Dashee, asks both Leaphorn and Sergeant Jim Chee for help in verifying Billy's story. However this undertaking proves far from simple.
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- Although the boy's tale seems farfetched, Leaphorn hears a similar story from Shorty McGinnis who tells the lieutenant that he traded food and a ride in his vehicle through a snowstorm with a cowboy for a diamond. The cowboy then claims that he swapped his old knife with an old man who lives in the canyon for the diamond. Further investigation leads to the discovery of an airplane crash over the canyon fifty years ago. One of the 172 passengers was a diamond merchant who had an attaché case filled with diamonds handcuffed to his wrist. This gives credence to Billy's and the cowboy's stories. Cowboy Dashee, Chee and officer Bernie Manuelito, Chee's fiancée, set off down the canyon in search of the old man who gave Billy the diamond. They think that he is a former Hopi priest who is trying to revive the cult of The Skeleton Man, the Hopi guardian of the underworld.
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- Also searching the canyon is the diamond dealer's illegitimate daughter who hopes to find her father's body to establish her claim to his fortune. She is being followed by an unscrupulous man whose task it is to see that she does not succeed even if he has to kill her. When all the characters converge on the same spot, the Hopi priest's cave, a furious rainstorm hits the canyon. Who will die, who will live and who will be brought to justice is no longer in the hands of Sergeant Chee and his colleagues. That is now being determined by the storm.
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- This tightly woven tale moves quickly toward the expected conclusion. Although an enjoyable read, there were no surprises in this story. This work’s true power lies in its silent hero, the Grand Canyon. Hillerman infuses life into this landscape by painting a picture of a harsh and unrelenting land, beautiful but treacherous at the same time. In the end, it is the terrain of this land and nature’s temperament that determines the outcome of the story.
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