“Brilliant…as fascinating as it is original.”—St. Louis Post-DispatchFrom New York Times bestselling author Tony Hillerman, the first novel in his series featuring Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn & Officer Jim Chee who encounter a bizarre case that borders between the supernatural and murderHomicide is always an abomination, but there is something exceptionally disturbing about the victim discovered … there is something exceptionally disturbing about the victim discovered in a high, lonely place—a corpse with a mouth full of sand—abandoned at a crime scene seemingly devoid of tracks or useful clues. Though it goes against his better judgment, Navajo Tribal Police Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn cannot help but suspect the hand of a supernatural killer.
There is palpable evil in the air, and Leaphorn’s pursuit of a Wolf-Witch leads him where even the bravest men fear, on a chilling trail that winds perilously between mysticism and murder.
more
Favorite books and author.
4 stars
This is the first book in the Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee series by Tony Hillerman. Jim Chee does not appear in this book and Leaphorn plays an equal role as protagonist against murderers with ethnologist Bergen McKee. Leaphorn is looking for Luis Horseman, who cut a Mexican in Gallup, New Mexico. Horseman turns up dead with few clues as to how …
This is the first of a series about the Navajo Nation police. The characters are great and the location is very familiar since I live in Arizona. The author’s daughter has continued the series after his death and retained the excellent writing and plotting of her father.
Love this series
Tony Hilllerman’s book was, as all the other ones that I have read, takes me to see another way of life
Anything by Hillerman in Navaho country is a great mystery as well as an education in understand better the Navaho – or Dinee – culture. Have them all, and delighted that his daughter is continuing the series as if he were there over her shoulder every keystroke of the way.
All of ‘Tony Hillerman’s books set in the Southwest among the Navaho and Hopi are wonderful. You learn a lot about the Native American cultures and traditions.
All Hillerman books are good. Read this long time ago
Tony Hillerman is an outstanding author. I read all of his mysteries and they were excellent. His daughter carried on his series.
I’ve never read anything from Tony Hillerman that I didn’t thoroughly enjoy. He opens up a culture of which I know very little.
Great author (now deceased) and brings the desert Southwest & Indians to life
Like any good mystery, the reader has a puzzle to solve
Hillerman’s books are wonderful insights into Navajo culture with a murder or a mystery built in. Really original in this genre. All are great stories.
As with all Hillerman’s novels, he transports the reader into the Navajo world, the southwest environment and culture, and unique crime investigations. Read this and all of Hillerman’s works. Time well spent.
Tony Hillerman always entertains, love his books.
I love all of the Hillerman novels about Joe Leaphorn, and “The Blessing Way” is number 1. No, I don’t mean my favorite, although it’s wonderful. It the first in the series, and it’s the proper place to start. Do it. You will not be disappointed.
Joe Leaphorn and other local characters and places on the Navajo reservation make this book unforgettable!
Tony Hillerman had such sympathy for his characters, such breadth of knowledge, and such craft in his plots that his books are an unparalleled joy to read.
A great introduction to the Navajo world of Tony Hillerman.
A wonderful introduction to a good series and great writer