Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee Series, #15
HarperCollins
January 2001
Featuring: Joe Leaphorn; Jim Chee
352 pages ISBN: 0061097861 Paperback (reprint) Add to Wish List
In 1998 three heavily armed "survivalists" came out of the
Four Corners canyons in a stolen truck. They murdered a
policeman, had a shootout with pursuers, and then
vanished - eluding a manhunt that eventually involved
hundreds of officers from more than twenty federal and
state agencies. The crime and the bungled FBI
investigation left behind a web of mysteries: Why did one
of the bandits kill himself? How did the others escape?
Why has no one in this impoverished area claimed the huge
reward the government still offers? Most puzzling of all,
what crime were they en route to commit when Officer Dale
Claxton stopped them - and paid for his bravery with his
life?" "Tony Hillerman assigns these real puzzles to his
fictional Navajo Tribal Police officers - Sergeant Jim
Chee and retired Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn. The time is now,
and the memory of the mishandled manhunt of 1998 is still
painfully fresh. Three men stage a predawn raid on the Ute
tribe's gambling casino. They kill one policeman, wound
another, and disappear in the maze of canyons on the Utah-
Arizona border. The FBI takes over the investigation, and
agents swarm in with their helicopters, their high-tech
equipment, and a theory of the crime that makes a wounded
deputy sheriff a suspect. This development calls Chee in
from his vacation, and a request for a favor draws in
Leaphorn. Chee finds a fatal flaw in the federal theory,
and Leaphorn sees an intriguing pattern connecting this
crime with the exploits of a legendary Ute hero-bandit.