It seems like July 8 is going to be a bad day for Acting Lieutenant Jim Chee. He's got a stack of overdue paperwork on his desk. Anderson Nez has died of plague, but the circumstances around the death are murky. His ex-fiancée, Janet Pete, is returning from Washington, D.C., and Chee doesn't know what to think about her last letter. (Will they be getting married this time?) And Officer Benny Kinsman's unwanted advances have enraged Catherine Pollard (among others), one of the scientists studying this newest outbreak of the black death. Now, the hot-headed Kinsman's gone off to nab a Hopi man who's poaching eagles. When Chee is called to back Kinsman up at Yells Back Butte, the bad day turns worse. He finds the young Hopi, Robert Jano, standing over Benny's mortally wounded body. Jano insists that he did not kill the police officer. Add to all this Joe Leaphorn's separate investigation, also involving July 8. Joe's got a new role as consulting detective to the wealthy--investigating the July 8 disappearance at Yells Back Butte of the same Catherine Pollard who was dogged by Kinsman.

This one bad day and the ensuing days of investigation bring Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee together once again as they uncover the secret of Yells Back Butte, plague fleas, and skinwalkers. As usual, Hilllerman's ear for dialogue is remarkable. One does not read Leaphorn and Chee's words and thoughts as much as hear them. While the book invites new readers (little knowledge of the previous books in the series is presumed), one has the sense of entering an old neighborhood where friends and relations are established and emotions run deep. Jim Chee's pain is vivid as he struggles under the shadow of Leaphorn and questions the "rusty trailer" lifestyle that has driven him apart from Janet. Nothing is contrived in his mixture of fear and elation when he and Janet meet again.

Hillerman has written an engaging novel that once again evokes the land and people of the Southwest while also confronting the cultural separateness of the region from the power centers of the East. Already honored for his previous work (Dance Hall of the Dead received the Edgar), The First Eagle is a welcome addition to the beloved Chee-Leaphorn series that began in 1971 with The Blessing Way. --Patrick O'Kelley


From Publishers Weekly
The modern resurgence of the black death animates Hillerman's 14th tale featuring retired widower Navajo Tribal Police Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn and Acting Lieutenant Jim Chee. Bubonic plague has survived for centuries in the prairie-dog villages of the Southwest, where its continuing adaptation to modern antibiotics has increased its potential for mass destruction. Leaphorn is hired by a wealthy Santa Fe woman to search for her granddaughter, biologist Catherine Pollard, who has disappeared during her field work as a "flea catcher," collecting plague-carrying specimens from desert rodents. At the same time, Jim Chee arrests Robert Jano, a young Hopi man and known poacher of eagles, in the bludgeoning death of another Navajo Police officer at a site where the biologist was seen working. As Leaphorn learns more about Pollard's work from her boss in the Indian Health Service and an epidemiologist with ties to a pharmaceutical company, the U.S. Attorney's office decides to seek the death penalty against Jano, who is being represented by Chee's former fiancee, Janet Pete, recently returned from Washington, D.C. Hillerman's trademark melding of Navajo tradition and modern culture is captured with crystal clarity in this tale of an ancient scourge's resurgence in today's world. The uneasy mix of old ways and new is articulated with resonant depth as Chee, an aspiring shaman, is driven to choose between his career and his commitment to the ways of his people, and Leaphorn moves into a deeper friendship with ethnology professor, Louisa Bourebonette. Author tour. (Aug.) FYI: Simultaneous release by HarperAudio in abridged ($25 ISBN 0-694-52011-X) and unabridged ($34.95 ISBN 0-694-52051-9) editions.Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From School Library Journal
YA-Acting Lieutenant Jim Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police is investigating the murder of a fellow officer-apparently committed by a young Hopi poaching eagles for ceremonial purposes. Chee's former mentor, Joe Leaphorn, is now retired and on his first case as a private detective, looking for a missing biologist who has been studying the spread of infectious diseases on the reservation. The men's destinies intersect once more in this case in which clues, like eagles, can only be found and understood by those who belong to the world of the reservation. Hillerman communicates a sense of the great space, beauty, and physical hardship of the desert landscape, and of the character of the people who live there. The mystery is set against a cultural backdrop of conflicts between Navajo and Hopi, Tribal and FBI law enforcement, sheep camp and city Navajo, and government and academic scientists studying disease outbreaks. The solution to the murder mystery comes stunningly into focus once the clues are all present and understood-but sadly (and true to life), the larger question of justice on the reservation, like the fate of the first eagle, is left unresolved. A disturbing but fascinating story.Christine C. Menefee, Fairfax County Public Library, VACopyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
After a less than successful attempt at writing a detective novel based in Vietnam (Finding Moon, Audio Reviews, LJ 1/96), Hillerman returns to his two unforgettable characters?Navajo tribal police lieutenant Jim Chee and his mentor/partner Joe Leaphorn?who have enchanted mystery lovers and literati through over a dozen novels (e.g., The Fallen Man, Audio Reviews, LJ 3/15/97). Leaphorn, retired a year, takes on a private investigation, searching for the vanished niece of a wealthy and somewhat eccentric woman. Cathy Pollard was, until her disappearance, a medical researcher investigating a terrifying outbreak of bubonic plague. For the uninitiated listener, the complex web of characters and their past relationships can sometimes seem like tuning into the middle of a soap opera. This reviewer found herself playing and replaying sections to get everything straight. But by the third tape, it no longer matters; we know every protagonist and can almost anticipate their actions. George Guidall, reading Hillerman for the first time, gives a delightful performance.?Rochelle Ratner, formerly with "Soho Weekly News," New YorkCopyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


New York Times Book Review
"Tony Hillerman is a wonderful storyteller...Surrendering to Hillerman's strong narrative voice and supple storytelling techniques, we come to see that ancient cultures and modern sciences are simply different mythologies for the same reality."


The Atlantic Monthly, Phoebe-Lou Adams
Mr. Hillerman's mysteries are set in a decisively real world, as opposed to the kind of novels in which a world is constructed to accommodate a plot. His Four Corners area has weather, enticingly depicted scenery, bad roads, and a tangle of conflicts pre-dating the action and sure to survive it. Hopi versus Navajo, modernists versus traditionalists, new love versus old commitment, superstition versus science, are active oppositions. Even the hostility between local authorities and the "Federal Bureau of Ineptitude" can be considered permanent. In the midst of these rivalries the two Navajo policemen, Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn (retired) and Acting Lieutenant Jim Chee (overworked), sort out a disappearance and a murder that may or may not be connected. They are a fine pair and are given a fine puzzle.


The Wall Street Journal, Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg
Mr. Hillerman skillfully blends Navaho lore with daily life.... Although the story is neatly told, the plot-line about a drug-resistant plague is slowed by Mr. Hillerman's fascination with scientific mumbo-jumbo.


Washington Post Book World
"Complex, engrossing...On their own, [Leaphorn and Chee] are compelling; as a duo they're the best since Lennon and McCartney."


Boston Globe
"Hillerman soars."


From AudioFile
Tony Hillerman pleases followers of his Navajo Tribal Police stories by neatly involving both Lt. Jim Chee, now a supervisor, and the "legendary lieutenant" Joe Leaphorn, now retired, in another case. Investigations of the murder of a Navajo policeman and the disappearance of a biologist doing research on plague-carrying fleas preoccupy the law officers. After having narrated 11 of Hillerman's mysteries, Guidall picks up the story like an old friend. His narration is smooth and polished as he eloquently delivers Hillerman's appealing mix of the traditional and modern worlds of the Southwest. This story is particularly slow moving, even for Hillerman, and seems to signal more changes to come in the characters' lives and relationships. R.F.W. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
Joe Leaphorn didn't believe in coincidences when he was a police officer, and he doesn't believe in them now that he's retired and working as a private investigator. So he's suspicious when his inquiry into the disappearance of a "flea catcher," a young woman working for the Arizona Health Department, leads him to the vicinity of the murder of a member of the Navajo Tribal Police. Acting Tribal Police Lieutenant Jim Chee isn't convinced there's a connection, but he knows there's something amiss about the story told by the accused cop killer, Robert Jano. Jano had motive and opportunity to kill the officer, and Chee actually nabbed him at the scene of the crime. But Jano has an alibi of sorts. Unfortunately, it hinges on the capture of an eagle. The two puzzles dovetail nicely, with Hillerman once again fusing mystery with an astute view of contemporary Navajo culture. Readers may notice a few loose ends in the plot this time around, but Hillerman is faithful to the personalities of the characters he's so fully developed over the course of his many books, and relationships between them continue to evolve--some blossoming, and some, sadly, seeming to draw to a close. Through it all runs Hillerman's respect and deep affection for his creations and their community. Stephanie Zvirin



"Hillerman's trademark melding of Navajo tradition and modern culture is captured with crystal clarity in this tale...



"Fascinating."


Dallas Morning News
"Fascinating."


Book Description
When Acting Lt. Jim Chee catches a Hopi poacher huddled over a butchered Navajo Tribal police officer, he has an open-and-shut case--until his former boss, Joe Leaphorn, blows it wide open. Now retired from the Navajo Tribal Police, Leaphorn has been hired to find a hot-headed female biologist hunting for the key to a virulent plague lurking in the Southwest. The scientist disappeared from the same area the same day the Navajo cop was murdered. Is she a suspect or another victim? And what about a report that a skinwalker--a Navajo witch--was seen at the same time and place too? For Leaphorn and Chee, the answers lie buried in a complicated knot of superstition and science, in a place where the worlds of native peoples and outside forces converge and collide.


About the Author
Tony Hillerman is past president of Mystery Writers of America and has received their Edgar and Grand Master Awards. His other honors include the Center for the American Indian's Ambassador Award, the Silver Spur Award for the best novel set in the West, the Navajo Tribe's Special Friend Award, the National Media Award from the American Anthropological Association, the Public Service Award from the U.S. Department of the Interior, the Nero Wolfe Award, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Oklahoma Center for the Book, an honorary life membership in the Western Literature Association, and the Grand Prix de Littérature Policiére. In addition to his election to Phi Beta Kappa, Tony Hillerman has been named Doctor of Humane Letters at Arizona State University and at Oregon's Portland State University. He lives with his wife, Marie, in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
The great ones don't just give us stories and characters and plots and locales. The great ones give us worlds, fully imagined, fully detailed. Nero Wolfe's brownstone. Agatha Christie's English village. Raymond Chandler's Southern California. And now, Tony Hillerman's world of Navajo culture.

The opening chapter of the new book is especially noteworthy because it seems to belong in a Robin Cook or Michael Crichton medical thriller — a man is dying of what appears to be the plague known as the Black Death. Hillerman makes the hospital scene, with all its high-tech equipment, even more frightening by adding touches of dour humor. This is a Tony Hillerman novel, a couple of doctors (one a cutting-edge microbiologist) arguing over the wisdom of giving a possibly dangerous corpse an autopsy?

Not to worry. We soon see Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn, our friendly Navajo detectives (albeit, one of them no longer official), and we soon see the familiar daily hassles that make Hillerman's police procedurals so believable. Sexual harassment raises its ugly head. A police secretary gets peeved when she isn't let in on all the secrets. And Hillerman gets in his inevitable dig at Washington, D.C., politics as regards Native Americans: 'Kinsman's grandmother, who spoke only Navajo, had been relocated in Flagstaff where almost nobody speaks Navajo.' And again, Hillerman's wily, deadpan humor: 'By mid-afternoon the next day the Jeep was found. If you discount driving about 200 miles back and forth, and some of it over roads far too primitive even to be listed on Chee's AAAIndianCountry road map, the whole project proved to be remarkably easy.'

The observational details in this new book are quiet but spectacularly realized, such as the unpretentious doctor: '[He] was looking at his black plastic digital [watch] which obviously hadn't been bought to impress the sort of people who are impressed by expensive watches.' Or Navajo wisdom: 'Always liked that about you guys. Four days of grief and mourning for the spirit, and then get on with life. How did we white folks get into this corpse worship business? It's just dead meat, and dangerous to boot.' Or the sly, wry Hillerman humor: 'About a month into his first semester at Arizona State, Leaphorn had overcome the tendency of young Navajos to think that all white people look alike.'

Hillerman has a poet's way with the land. He rightly understands that his entire drama is being played out against a ragged and rugged land that is as much a participant in the drama as Chee and Leaphorn themselves. Without getting corny or patronizing, he's able to convey the Navajo reverence for the land and to differentiate how the white man and the Native American view the planet. He is also wise enough not to depict all white people as know-nothing boobs. Boobism is, alas, something shared by all cultures. There's plenty to go around. Hillerman stage-manages all the various plot points — the brain-dead cop, the missing woman, the possible plague, the violent eagle — skillfully and subtly. None of the seams show. And he does it all with a lively, easygoing style that never calls attention to itself, never jars the reader out of the world he's creating before our eyes.

There's a simple reason for Tony Hillerman's popularity. He's one of the best mystery writers who ever lived. — Ed Gorman

FROM THE PUBLISHER

When Acting Lt. Jim Chee catches a Hopi poacher huddled over a butchered Navajo Tribal police officer, he has an open-and-shut case—until his former boss, Joe Leaphorn, blows it wide open. Now retired from the Navajo Tribal Police, Leaphorn has been hired to find a hot-headed female biologist hunting for the key to a virulent plague lurking in the Southwest. The scientist disappeared from the same area the same day the Navajo cop was murdered. Is she a suspect or another victim? And what about a report that a skinwalker—a Navajo witch—was seen at the same time and place too? For Leaphorn and Chee, the answers lie buried in a complicated knot of superstition and science, in a place where the worlds of native peoples and outside forces converge and collide.

Author Biography:

Tony Hillerman is past president of the Mystery Writers of America and has received their Edgar and Grand Master awards. His other honors include the Center for the American Indian's Ambassador Award, the Silver Spur Award for best novel set in the West, and the Navajo Tribe's Special Friend Award. He lives with his wife, Marie, in Albuquerque, NM.

SYNOPSIS

Loaded with e-book extras (not available in the print edition), including Tony Hillerman's running commentary on his work, his series heroes Leaphorn and Chee, and a special profile of the Navajo nation.

When Acting Lt.

FROM THE CRITICS

USA Today

Hillerman at his best.

San Francisco Chronicle

A crackerjack thriller.

New York Times Book Review

Tony Hillerman is a wonderful storyteller!

NY Times Book Review

Tony Hillerman is a wonderful storyteller!

Washington Post Book World