The Ghostway

At a Navajo laundromat in Shiprock, old Joseph Joe witnesses two strangers in a fight that leaves one dead and sends the other fleeing with a photograph of the man he is hunting. The survivor drives into the vast reservation, and Tribal Policeman Jim Chee follows a trail that takes him from a ghost-haunted hogan in New Mexico to the streets of Los Angeles, where the Navajo concept of the chindi, the malignant spirit of the dead, finds an unexpected parallel in the urban underworld.

George Guidall's narration of Tony Hillerman's Chee novels brings the same respectful attention to Navajo cultural practice and belief that characterizes the books themselves. His voice gives Jim Chee's personal investment in traditional Navajo ways a dignity that prevents it from reading as anthropological curiosity. The audiobook's transitions between the reservation and Los Angeles are particularly effective in Guidall's handling: two worlds rendered equally real.