Listening Woman: Simplicity Underplays an Author's Own Talent.

In 1990 or 1991, my mother sat in our family room on a late Friday night, poring over a small paperback, eyes intently focused on every word illuminated by the small lamp that sat on a coffee table next to the sofa. The cover was white, with glossy green letters and an interesting and colorful portrait on it. Glancing at it briefly, I quickly recognized it from pictured and paintings my grandfather had in his collection of Native American art. I was immediately interested.

"What are you reading," I asked.

"It's a Native American murder mystery," she said.

I as immediately hooked. Not only did I like whodunnits, but I loved the fact that the book would be talking about the same people who made these wonderful and interesting paintings. "Can I read it," I asked.

My mom continued to read. "Sure," she muttered, never looking up from the page the entire time.

I walked out of the room and up to the kitchen, grabbing a glass of water, and heading to my room, closed the door, and continued with some random Sebastien Barth mystery that to this day, I can not remember the title. The problem with the types of mysteries I was reading, it was too kid-like, not real enough, but upon seeing those images of the Native American art, Hillerman's mysterious world of murder and mayhem on the rolling mountains and desert wastelands of the Navajo Reservation in New Mexico and Arizona had me hooked. Although I've read about sixteen of his Navajo Reservation (or to fans, Leaphorn and Chee) mysteries, and my mom always fondly remembered this one, for some reason, I never got around to reading it until now.

The story starts off with a murder that leaves our main character, Joe Leaphorn (the original protagonist in the series, before it became a duo and then trio of protagonists for most of the books), investigating the death of a young girl that occurs while she is journeying to a Navajo sacred site with her great aunt Margaret Cigaret who, ironically, is blind and only discovers that her great niece has been murdered after she has come out of the sacred site in a cliff cave. In separate incidents, a helicopter has been stolen and it has disappeared somewhere over the Navajo reservation, and a man named Frederick Lynch has been murdered and his car has been stolen, the only description of the perpetrator was that he was wearing gold-rim glasses. (Really, that's it?)

Leaphorn begins an investigation into the murder, asking locals about any news why someone would want the niece dead, and Leaphorn conjectures that it's possible that the murderer wanted the niece dead because of her boyfriend who is connected to a secret society hell-bent on protecting Navajo tradition and causing domestic terrorism against "the white man." Leaphorn has also been assigned a seemingly unrelated case (yeah, right) of a missing helicopter. Leaphorn asks some locals about how to find this Cigaret woman and he discovers that a woman named Theodora Adams knows where Cigaret is, but will only help him if he helps her track down her long-lost boyfriend (Benjamin Tso.)

Upon agreeing to this, Leaphorn helps Theodora find Tso, and after reuniting them, learns from a local trader named McGinnis, that this Tso guy actually is rumored to have been working with a Navajo terrorist organization. Upon learning this, Leaphorn returns to Tso's hogan to find that he's missing and that his car has been stolen. He tracks the car from the drive and follows the road to find it abandoned out in the desert by Lake Powell. Following the trail of clues, Leaphorn finds find two men (Tso and his accomplice, and a career criminal named John Tull, who is identified through an FBI database as Goldrims, plotting some kind of terrorist plot in the caves near the lake. After trying to shoot Leaphorn, they send their vicious dog after him, which Leaphorn outwits, and tracks them into a series of secret caves near Lake Powell. Leaphorn sneaks around to find Goldrims/Tull and Tso and an unnamed accomplice (like a henchman, basically) have kidnapped a group of white school kids and have threatened violence in revenge for white atrocities (yawn) against the Navajos. Leaphorn realizes that this Tso is part of this Navajo terrorist group, and is plotting to destroy the dam at Lake Powell. Leaphorn cunningly neutralizes the group of bad guys, and in a fit of what seems like remorse, Tso aides Leaphorn in stopping the terror plot by using the explosives on himself and his fellow co-conspirator, leaving Leaphorn and the girlfriend, Theodora alive to escape via boats onto the lake. We find out as Leaphorn sits in the boat that he surmises the stolen helicopter was probably used to escape after an earlier terror plot that was connected to the group and that they crash landed the copter in Lake Powell, but that story thread just wasn't even necessary.

Personally, I thought the overall plot of this was way too simple and boring, with easy copouts and pretty much no red herrings or even side story/side plotting. It just didn't have me that interested. A little way into the book, it was clear that the boyfriend, Benjamin Tso, was involved, and that's probably more of a testament to me knowing how Hillerman likes to use characters in the novel, and it was set up similar to a later novel that he wrote that I had already read. The minor conflicts with the dog (which were played up so much that you'd think there was going to be something really climactic with them and there wasn't) seemed a bit cheap because it just didn't seem all that complicated for Leaphorn to just shoot the dog. Instead, he's finally able to lure the dog over a cliff early on as he's sneaking around trying to find the two bad guys when he discovers the cave. There is more to the story, like him sneaking around after he is flushed up into the caverns as the dog and bad guys pursue him, trying to flush him out by setting fire to a hidey-hole Leaphorn finds to avoid getting shot or attacked by the dog, and Leaphorn's discussion with the FBI as they had originally been tailing John Tull prior to this terror plot, but had lost him because he had cleverly changed identities and vanished, but even that just didn't interest me all that much. Although the plot was well-thought out and had no holes, it just read a bit too simple for a Hillerman novel for me. Hillerman limits the cast of characters, which makes you really hone in on Tso as one of the suspects, and you know John Tull is lurking around, so as much as he gets mentioned, you almost kind of already know that Goldrims, who is introduced early on, has to be him.

Furthermore, the story thread with Frederick Lynch (yeah, remember I barely mentioned him way back at the start?), the main murder that is part of the original investigation is just poo-pooed pretty much the entire book and all out forgotten about after about 130 pages until Hillerman conveniently mentions that the reason he was murdered to begin with was because Tull (Goldrims) was panicking, running form the cops, and needed transportation to escape, so he just kills the guy and steals his car. Yes, that's plausible, but the way Hillerman emphasize this murder at the beginning, it suggests that this Lynch guy is important, and he simply is used as a boring plot device when, if he had no involvement with the larger group of antagonists (like he was somehow going to expose their whole terrorist organization), there really was no point in having him in the book.

At the end of the day, I was disappointed in this one, and I sadly have to say this is one of the few Hillerman books where he just didn't deliver on all of his potentially-interesting story threads, and it was just very un-Hillerman-like. I hate to say it mom, but this one's just not worth the read. Feel free to comment if you've read anything of Hillerman's--what you like, what you don't, and why.

Cheers,

Scott