Tony Hillerman Collection almost complete unabridged collection MakeGreatMusic.net

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Audio Books : Mystery : Other quality : English

This is an "almost complete" list of Tony Hillerman's unabridged Writings. I have lived in this area (and maybe still do :wink:) and his stories are "right on" with the culture and landscape. I'm not sure if these stories are unabridged or not, but they are all great listenings!







Tony Hillerman was born in Oklahoma in 1925. He joined the US Army in 1943 and won the Silver Star, the Bronze Star with Oak Leaf Cluster and the Purple Heart after being wounded. After the war he attended the University of Oklahoma and worked as a journalist, eventually becoming editor of the New Mexican. In 1963 he went to graduate school at the University of New Mexico and joined the journalism faculty there in 1966. His first Navajo mystery, The Blessing Way, was published in 1970



1.Blessing Way - THE BLESSING WAY introduces Lt. Joe Leaphorn, a Native American at work on Navajo lands in the southwest. The story opens well: a young man has fled to a remote area of the reservation to avoid arrest, and Leaphorn pursues him. At the same time, Leaphorn helps a professor of Native American traditions who has come to the reservation to research Navajo witchcraft lore. But the case takes unexpected turn when the two elements suddenly combine: the young man is found dead and rumors of a witch abound.



2.Dance Hall of the Dead - Twelve-year-old Ernesto Cata (Zu�i) is practicing to be the Fire God in a local ceremony. His best buddy George Bowlegs (Navaho) is a Zu�i wana-be.Ernesto is missing and there is a pool of blood by his bike. The next day his buddy George runs off. It is up to Sgt. Joe Leaphorn to find the boys before anything happens to them (if it has not already.)



3. Listening Woman - oe is investigating a variety of backburner cases as an excuse to be in an area where a motorist had nearly hit him. As he digs deeper, a missing helicopter and an FBI investigation seem to be involved in whatever is going on. Enter the Dirk Pitt side of Joe's personality. I won't spoil the surprise but suffice it to say that Joe endures flame, flood and a host of other harrowing experiences as he solves the crime and saves the day.



4.People of Darkness - A bomb goes off in a hospital parking lot, apparently aimed at killing a man who is already dying of cancer, a box containing little of apparent value disappears from a rich man's house, and an oil well explosion thirty years back has some connection to these events. This is vintage Hillerman: a story than ranges over vast areas of time and space. The villain in "People of Darkness" is one of Hillerman's best: a cold professional with the vulnerability of a battered child.



5. The shape Shifter - I'm looking for theis audio book. Sorry, I'll upload latter - Retired Tribal Police Officer, Joe Leaphorn, gets a note from another retired Tribal Police friend turned private investigator, Melvin Bork. In the letter is a photo that appeared in a recent magazine of a priceless Navajo rug that was supposedly destroyed in a fire years ago. Bork and Leaphorn have always been troubled by this arson case, in which a man from the FBI's most wanted list was also killed. Bork decides to investigate the reappearance of the tale-teller rug, and he quickly disappears. Leaphorn realizes that he must go back an reinvestigate the original case to discover what happened to Bork. He receives the assistance of another retired officer--this time an FBI agent, Ted Rostic. Having the two retired law officers working together is a refreshing change as the Tribal Police and the FBI usually have an adversarial relationship (the Tribal Police call them the Federal Bureau of Ineptitude). As Leaphorn gets closer to solving the mystery, the more his life becomes endangered.



6.The Dark Wind - Navajo Tribal Police Sgt. Jim Chee seems to be batting zero; so far he has not been able to solve a series of seemingly unrelated crimes. In an area that was joint use land between the Navaho and the Hopi (now Hopi) Sgt Jim Chee is given the task of finding the vandal that keeps destroying a windmill placed there to make Hopi life easer. He hears an airplane landing in the dark of night with no lights. The plane crashes and leaves a dying pilot. Also a dead man sitting up against a rock with a note in his hand saying if you want it back contact...



Sgt Chee is told that it is probably drugs and federal jurisdiction. Chee is not supposed to go anywhere near or have anything to do with the case. He has his own problems with the mill, a missing thief, and a mysterious ritual death. Naturally he listens, and can not help it if they overlap.





7.The Ghostway - A Shoot out at the Shiprock Wash-O-Mat leads to a puzzle that only Jim Chee with his knolage of the Gostway and of death rituals can try to peace together. Related is a disappearance of a school girl (Margaret Sosi) will lead Jim from the New Mexico landscape to the Los Angeles area. There with Hillerman's gift for description we also get a contrasting look of the different worlds. Will He find the girl and what does the puzzle spell out, or will it ever become clear?



8.Skinwalkers - Three shotgun blasts explode into the trailer of Officer Jim Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police. But Chee survives to join partner Lt. Joe Leaphorn in a frightening investigation that takes them into a dark world of ritual, witchcraft, and blood�all tied to the elusive and evil "skinwalker." Brimming with Navajo lore and sizzling suspense, Skinwalkers brings Chee and Leaphorn, Hillerman's bestselling detective team, together for the first time.





9.A Thief of Time - An anthropologist disappears, two men are found murdered, a backhoe is missing and Joe Leaphorn, who's wife has recently died and is retiring from the force, wants one last big case before he quits. He cooperates with junior officer Jim Chee who just wants to find out who stole that damned backhoe and murdered those two men in the truck.



10.Talking God - Henry Highhawk is a born again Navajo - his grandmother is Agnes Tsosse but he has only just found that out - he has been learning all about the spirituality and culture of the Navajo and has been setting up a diorama at the Smithsonian to represent the masks of the gods, but it seems he has another presentation in mind. A much more visible act to get the world's attention and to protest against the continued storage of native American skeletons and remains at the museum.



However there are other forces at work, there is something going on at an embassy in Washington which Leaphorn suspects is related but he does not understand how - finally Jim Chee and Leaphorn meet up in Washington to compare notes and it all becomes clear.



11.Coyote Waits - im Chee sits drinking coffee while partner Tribal Policeman Delbert Nez meets his demise. Chee catches the obvious perpetrator. A Navaho shaman, with a bottle in one hand and THE gun in his belt. Case closed.



Because of his guilt at not backing up his partner and at the insistence of Chee's on again and off again relationship with the defending attorney, Janet Pete, Chee must find out for him self what happened and if he may have made a mistake.

Because of a relationship through is dead wife with Ashie Pinto's (the defendant) clan and also being pushed by Dr. Bourbonette (anthropologist), who insists that Ashie is being railroaded, Joe Leaphorn but also investigate from a different angle. He is constantly thinking about what his dead wife Emma would say in the situation.



12.Sacred Clowns - Sacred Clowns set within the context of Navajo culture and using the overwhelming physical presence of the Southwest as backdrop, mixes ethnicity, human greed, and romance into an intriguing mystery.



The novel reunites Navajo Detective Jim Chee and Lt. Joe Leaphorn. Chee now part of Leaphorn's two-man Special Investigations Office has been assigned to follow Delmar Kanitewa, a runaway student and grandson of a powerful member of the tribal council.



Chee follows the boy to the Tano Pueblo for a ceremony of koshares, sacred clowns, only to see the ceremony interrupted by a murder. The boy, who is in full site of Chee during the murder at the Pueblo, vanishes. Later it is discovered that he may also know something about another murder, that of shop- teacher Eric Dorsey.



With the boy's disappearance, we are left with the mystery of how exactly the two murders are connected. However, these murders are just the beginning of an intricate plot that involves an unsolved hit and run case, political and religious scandal, and romance for both Chee and Leaphorn.



13. The Fallen Man - Looks like a skeleton of a climber was found on a ledge on Ship Rock. Could this solve the mystery of a person missing for many years? Retired Joe Leaphorn is given a retainer to find out the circumstances. He enlists the help of Jim Chee.



Chee has his plate pretty full trying to juggle his love life, being acting LT., dealing with an over zealous assistant. On top of that he has to compete with a boring snob of an authority in tracking down cattle rustler(s).



14.The First Eagle - Chee is now a Lieutenant in The First Eagle, and Leaphorn, whose wife has died, is retired and trying the role of PI on for size. Chee has got a murder to solve, and Leaphorn's working on a missing person case; the two cases merge on Yells Back Butte while, on the side, we have hantavirus rearing its ugly head.



15.Hunting Badger - While retired Lt. Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee are hunting down the people responsible for a casino robbery, we learn that they may be tied to a legend of a mysterious indian (George Ironhand) that seems to have the ability to fly. Tied in with this is the concept of "Hunting Badger."



16.The Sinister Pig - "The Sinister Pig" is another in Hillerman's long-running series of mystery novels centering upon the now retired, but hardly inactive, Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn and Sergeant Jim Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police. This time the plot is in part inspired by the continuing scandal over the mismanagement - embezzlement and outright theft may be closer to the point - of funds due to Southwest Indian tribes for oil, gas, and coal taken from their reservations under Federal auspices. An investigator sent by a powerful Washington, DC, senator to nose around turns up dead with a bullet in his back. It is Jim Chee's case - or at least as much of the case as the FBI will let him handle - but it is immediately clear that somebody with high connections back in Washington wants the investigation squelched.



Meanwhile, Jim Chee has something else on his mind. Bernadette Manuelito, formerly an officer in the Navajo Tribal Police, has taken a new job with the Border Patrol, 200 miles away, just when Chee was working up his resolve to make his personal interest clear to her. And now Bernie has stumbled on some mysterious goings-on along the Mexican border that might tie in to the unsolved murder back home.



17.Skeleton Man - John Clarke is a diamond merchant with a cache of diamonds chained to his wrist. One of these precious blue-white gems is intended for his fianc�e, who is pregnant with their child. While flying home, his plane collides with another over the Grand Canyon, and bodies and debris rain down for miles. Clarke's father refuses to acknowledge his son's fianc�e or child. Years later, Clarke's daughter, Joanna Craig, sets out to prove her paternity and to claim the inheritance she has been denied. The discovery of two diamonds brings her to the Grand Canyon in an effort to find her father's arm (which legend says was seen chained to the case of diamonds). Her search is not so much for the diamonds, but for DNA. But there are also those who have a lot to lose if Joanna is successful, and they set about trying to obstruct her investigation.



18.The Wailing Man - In the present, Officer Bernadette Manuelito finds a man curled up dead on a truck seat in the desert. Mistakenly assuming it was an accidental drunken death she inadvertently mishandles what turns out to be a crime scene and finds herself in trouble. And so, Sgt. Jim Chee and Lt. Joe Leaphorn enter the case partly to help Bernadette, and partly to carry out agendas of their own. Chee because he dislikes the FBI and likes Bernadette, and Leaphorn because evidence in this case reminds him of another one where Wiley Denton killed a swindler, and Wiley's wife vanished without a trace.



There is a Navaho legend of a Wailing Woman seeking in the desert for a lost child. Years ago, when Denton made his kill in self-defense, several students heard a woman's cries out in the nearly deserted bunkers of Fort Wingate. But it was Halloween, and the police filed the report away, more interested in the killing they could see. Years later Leaphorn is still haunted by that story and has never stopped wondering where Mrs. Linda Denton had gone.



The three investigators pursue the case separately and together, until the threads begin to point to a set of conclusions that will both surprise and please the reader. One cannot help but enjoy a tale which mixes Indian ways with police work, where lore provides just as many clues as the forensic specialists do.



19. The shape Shifter - I'm looking for theis audio book. Sorry, I'll upload latter - Retired Tribal Police Officer, Joe Leaphorn, gets a note from another retired Tribal Police friend turned private investigator, Melvin Bork. In the letter is a photo that appeared in a recent magazine of a priceless Navajo rug that was supposedly destroyed in a fire years ago. Bork and Leaphorn have always been troubled by this arson case, in which a man from the FBI's most wanted list was also killed. Bork decides to investigate the reappearance of the tale-teller rug, and he quickly disappears. Leaphorn realizes that he must go back an reinvestigate the original case to discover what happened to Bork. He receives the assistance of another retired officer--this time an FBI agent, Ted Rostic. Having the two retired law officers working together is a refreshing change as the Tribal Police and the FBI usually have an adversarial relationship (the Tribal Police call them the Federal Bureau of Ineptitude). As Leaphorn gets closer to solving the mystery, the more his life becomes endangered.





20.Fly on the Wall - Ace reporter John Cotton is a fly on the wall -- seeing all, hearing all, and keeping out of sight. But the game changes when he finds his best friend's corpse sprawled on the marble floor of the central rotunda of the U.S. Capitol. Suddenly Cotton knows too much about a scandal centered around a senatorial candidate, a million-dollar scam, and a murder. And he hears the pursuing footsteps of powerful people who have something to hide ... and a willingness to kill to keep their secrets hidden.



21.Finding Moon - In April 1975, Moon Mathias, managing editor of a small-town Colorado newspaper, begins a redemptive jo