Western Mysteries
The trans-Mississippi West seems a great stage for mysteries. The urban East has its turf, especially New York City (and Spenser’s Boston, I hasten to add), and the West Coast has its mean streets, especially in Los Angeles. Florida and New Orleans can make good claims. But the big West, where scale is almost unimaginable compared to the size of a bullet, is an interesting and evocative place for the unknown and the human agent to make it known.
If you wanted to track a lineage for Western Mysteries, you could go back to Robert Montgomery Bird’s Nick of the Woods (1837) or Mark Twain’s Puddn’head Wilson (1894) or others soon to follow by Zane Grey and the explosion of “westerns” in the early 20th Century. For this page, however, in its launch, we will stick the most popular writers for Whistlestop in this category. Check back for more thought and more additions.
The Fallen Man: A Leaphorn and Chee Novel
The Fallen Man: A Leaphorn and Chee Novel
From New York Times bestselling author Tony Hillerman comes another thrilling mystery featuring Leaphorn & Chee who must investigate a cold case that has far more personal consequences than expected.
“Gripping.”—New York Times Book Review
Human bones lie on a ledge under the peak of Ship Rock mountain, the remains of a murder victim undisturbed for more than a decade. Three hundred miles across the Navajo reservation, a harmless old canyon guide is felled by a sniper's bullet.
Joe Leaphorn, recently retired from the Navajo Tribal Police, believes the shooter and the skeleton are somehow connected and recalls a chilling puzzle he was previously unable to solve. But Acting Lieutenant Jim Chee is too busy to take an interest in a dusty cold case . . . until the reborn violence of it hits much too close to home.