3 Review(s)

This long-awaited new novel from the author of such blockbuster bestsellers as Coyote Waits and A Thief of Time is Tony Hillerman at his best. In a taught and richly woven mystery set in the Navajo Southwest, Tribal Policemen Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee unravel the treacherous web of tribal politics that connects two murders. During a kachina ceremony at the Tano pueblo, the antics of a dancing koshare fill the air with tension. Moments later, the clown is found bludgeoned to death, in the same manner a reservation schoolteacher was killed only days before. Officer Jim Chee and Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn believe that answers lie in the sacred clown\'s final cryptic message to the Tano people. But to decipher it, the two Navajo policemen may have to delve into closely guarded tribal secrets -- on a sinister trail of blood that links a runaway, a holy artifact, corrupt Indian traders, and a pair of dead bodies.