I generally avoid reading mysteries but this novel made me change my mind about the whole genre. The story is more like the adventure stories I read as a kid only much better (Remember Nancy Drew?). The novel is set in Navajo country, present day Colorado, Utah and Arizona. When an anthropologist goes missing, Police Officer Leaphorn reluctantly finds himself chasing clues. Leaphorn is a smart detective whose intuition and judgement rarely fails him. The story fed the anthropologist in me; I learned a surprising amount of information about the Anasazi, an ancient tribe who disappeared around the 1200s. The story had an Indiana Jones flavour to it with the desert setting, the caves, cliffs and caverns, Native tribes, curses, burial grounds.
There are 18 novels in the Navajo Tribal Police series, with this novel being the 8th. More info on Hillerman on wikipedia here.
