The great pleasure of Tony Hillerman's series of police procedurals--featuring Sgt. Jim Chee and/or Lt. Joe Leaphorn of the Navajo Tribal Police--lies not in details of procedure, nor cleverness of the puzzle to be solved, nor in particularly interesting characters.  Many other series do these things better.  What Hillerman really excels at is bringing alive a region of the country, the Four Corners in the Southwest, and an unfamiliar social milieu, the American Indian reservation.  His writing evokes the rugged beauty and utter desolation of desert and mesa, and his descriptions of Navajo (and, in this novel, Hopi) religious beliefs and tribal customs portray a truly fascinating culture.

In Dark Wind, Chee must try to solve several cases : the fatal crash of a drug-running airplane; a jewel robbery; and the repeated sabotaging of a local windmill.  They turn out, predictably, to be interrelated, and the conclusion is fairly pro forma.  But then there's the almost incidental insight into Chee's way of thinking, when he's talking to the sister of the pilot who died in the crash :

    'Do you understand "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth"?'

    'I've heard it,' Chee said.

    'Don't you believe in justice? Don't you believe that things need to be evened up?'

    Chee shrugged.  'Why not?' he said.  As a matter of fact, the concept seemed as strange to him as the
    idea that someone with money would steal had seemed to Mrs. Musket.  Someone who violated
    basic laws of behavior and harmed you was, by Navajo definition, 'out of control.'  The 'dark wind'
    had entered him and destroyed his judgment.  One avoided such persons, and worried about them,
    and was pleased if they were cured of the temporary insanity and returned again to hozro.  But to
    Chee's Navajo mind, the idea of punishing them would be as insane as the original act.  He
    understood it was a common attitude in the white culture, but he'd never before encountered it so
    directly.

Now Hillerman may or may not have this stuff right, who knows.  And I may think that many of the beliefs explored are so much hogwash.  But somehow, the books give you the feeling that you're fulfilling that annoying old college requirement of "Knowledge of a Culture Other Than Your Own" in the most enjoyable way imaginable.

(Reviewed:11-Jul-01)

Grade: (B)

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