Best Tony Hillerman Books

Navajo Tribal Police officer Jim Chee tracks connections between recent murders and a decades-old uranium mining incident on the reservation. Hillerman weaves Navajo traditions and modern crime investigation into a mystery rooted in cultural authenticity.

Bizarre clues accumulate around Jim Chee: a corpse with scalped palms, a crashed airplane, a windmill attack, and missing cocaine in this desert mystery.

A killing at a reservation laundromat sends Tribal Policeman Jim Chee tracking a killer across the Big Reservation, from trapped spirits to urban corruption.

Human remains on Ship Rock mountain have waited eleven years for discovery—now Leaphorn and Chee must solve a murder that bridges two different worlds.

Three seemingly unrelated murders across Navajo territory lead Officers Chee and Leaphorn into the terrifying world of skinwalker legends and tribal witchcraft practices.

Officer Bernadette Manuelito finds a corpse in a blue pickup with tracer gold and a rich ex-con's phone number, but her scene mishandling spells trouble for Sgt. Jim Chee. The case echoes a decades-old crime across Navajo country.

Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn of the Navajo Tribal Police investigates the bloody disappearance of two Native American boys, one Navajo and one Zuñi, in the stark New Mexican desert.

Two Native American boys vanish in a pool of blood, sending Navajo Tribal Police Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn into New Mexico's harsh landscape to uncover the truth.

A corpse with sand-filled mouth appears in a sacred place, forcing Navajo police Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn to navigate between traditional beliefs and criminal investigation. Hillerman launched his acclaimed series with this cultural mystery.

Navajo policeman Delbert Nez dies by bullet, not car fire, and the drunk shaman found with the murder weapon refuses to confess or deny anything.

When high-tech FBI manhunts fail in the canyon country, Navajo officers Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn use traditional tracking skills to hunt casino robbers. Hillerman contrasts modern law enforcement methods with indigenous knowledge of the harsh landscape.

A dead teacher and missing student at a Pueblo boarding school draw detectives Leaphorn and Chee into a case where sacred ceremonies and modern violence intersect on the reservation.

Hillerman weaves grave robbing, museum politics, and Navajo cultural preservation into a complex web that gradually reveals its shocking connections. The Smithsonian backdrop adds institutional weight to personal vendettas.

Hillerman's mystery unfolds around a suspicious death that the FBI too quickly dismisses as a hunting accident. Chee's investigation into the Jicarilla Apache gas fields reveals the kind of corruption and cover-up that makes federal interference suddenly make sense.