We mystery lovers have many good choices for Native American Heritage Month. Here are just a few.
Tony and Anne Hillerman’s acclaimed Joe Leaphorn & Jim Chee and Leaphorn, Chee & Manuelito series set in the Four Corners area of the American Southwest and featuring Navajo detectives Joe Leaphorn, Jim Chee, and Bernadette Manuelito. Tony Hillerman began writing these award-winning mysteries in 1970 and they have been wildly popular ever since. After Tony’s death in 2008, his daughter Anne continued the series, and by most accounts her books are every bit as good as her dad’s.
The Charlie Moon Mysteries by James D. Doss. Charlie Moon is a rancher and sometime tribal police investigator on the Southern Colorado Ute reservation. To solve mysteries, he calls on his own cleverness and on his Aunt Daisy Perika, a tribal shaman with prophetic dreams and supernatural intuition. In these complex and gripping crime novels, James D. Doss combines mystery with vibrant details of Native American life and custom.
The Ella Clah mystery series by Aimee and David Thurlo follows Ella Clah, Special Investigator for the Navajo Police Department, as she solves crimes on the Navajo Reservation. Clah is a former FBI agent, a cop, and the single mother of a daughter.
Wind River mysteries by Margaret Coel. This suspenseful mystery series takes place on the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming. Starring John O’Malley, a Catholic priest, and Vicky Holden, an Arapaho attorney, these character-driven tales are immersed in Native American culture and occasionally steeped in blood. Murder and mayhem make themselves known, as do the serious problems plaguing modern Native American life.
Emmett Quanah Parker mysteries by Kirk Mitchell, featuring Bureau of Indian Affairs Investigator Emmett Quanah Parker and his partner, FBI special agent Anna Turnipseed. Turnipseed is a Modoc Indian from California, and Parker, a Comanche from Oklahoma. Together, their assignments take them to investigate crimes on Native American lands throughout the country.
Dana Stabenow’s Kate Shugak series. Aleutian Kate Shugak–formerly an Achorage police investigator and now a private eye–lives on a 160-acre homestead in Alaska’s largest national park. Her roommate is a half-wolf, half-husky dog named Mutt, and her nearest neighbors are a bull moose and a grizzly sow. Farther off are dog mushers, miners, hunters, trappers, fishermen, bush pilots, pipeline workers, Park rangers—and, it turns out, murderers.
The Leilani Santiago books by Edgar Award winning writer Naomi Hirahara. While neither the author nor the main character is native Hawaiian, many of the secondary characters are. These books provide a realistic account of life on Kaua‘i and touch on some of the social issues, like land rights for native Hawaiians, that are important to Hawaiian life. Plus, they make you feel like you’re there, which is not a bad thing as we descend into winter here in New England.