[Talking God] [By: Tony Hillerman] [January, 2010]

Two separate investigations—a Jane Doe murder case and an activist's crusade to reclaim ancestral remains from a Washington museum—seem to have nothing in common until the American Southwest and the nation's capital begin pulling toward each other with quiet, inevitable force. Tony Hillerman sets Leaphorn and Chee on parallel paths through worlds that rarely intersect: Navajo ceremony and federal politics, reservation dust and Smithsonian marble. The stakes turn out to be far larger than either detective initially suspects, and the tension builds not through action-movie urgency but through the creeping sense that something ancient and dangerous has been disturbed.

What distinguishes this novel as a reading experience is Hillerman's rare ability to make landscape feel like character and belief feel like plot logic. He never condescends to Navajo spirituality or reduces it to exotic backdrop—it operates here as genuine narrative force. The dual-protagonist structure keeps readers slightly off-balance in the best way, since Leaphorn's methodical reasoning and Chee's more intuitive approach offer two entirely different lenses on the same unfolding mystery. The prose is spare, patient, and quietly confident throughout.