I have been a fan of Tony Hillerman for a long time.  His descriptions of the beautiful, though stark, country around the Four Corner's region of Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah always weaves a magic that makes me long to be there.  It is an endlessly lovely, peaceful place in the Southwestern United States.  When I read Hillerman's lyrical descriptions I long to spend time there, getting to know the infinite variety of all it's many moods.  Mr. Hillerman describes the area with such affection and care to detail.

          His newest book, Hunting Badger, picks up the lives of two of the most human and interesting law enforcement characters that I have had the privilege of meeting.  These two men, although of different ages and life's circumstances, both possess a curiosity and knack of divining the true answers to complex, sometimes confusing, crimes perpetrated in the isolated and vast reservation area around the Four Corners.

          In the course of the developing Hillerman series, which numbers over a dozen books, Joe Lephorn has gone from being the savvy and very methodical Lieutenant in charge of investigating crime for the Tribal police to being retired from the force.  He has experienced the death of his beloved wife, Emma, from Cancer and is, in Hunting Badger, a restless bachelor, trying to decide how to spend the rest of his life without being lonely.  He constantly keeps in his heart the old, good memories of his life with Emma but is working to balance a potential new relationship with a professor of Anthropological studies that he met in a previous story.  Although retired and with no official standing within the law-enforcement community, Lephorn is offered the change to become involved in the details of a serious crime -- the robbery of a Ute Tribal Casino and subsequent murder of a Security guard, a moonlighting Tribal policeman, and the wounding of another off duty policeman, who is suspected by the FBI of being involved in the planning of the robbery. Lephorn is tempted to work toward a solution after he is contacted and given the names of three men who may have committed the crime.

          The other main character is a much younger man.   Although equally talented in solving puzzling crimes, Jim Chee is a sometimes unorthodox loner that got much of his training on the force under the tutledge of Lieutenant Lephorn.  Chee is unmarried and has been in love with Janet Peet throughout several of the previous books.  The love affair has never been placid, since each partner's priorities and life's ambitions are very different and nearly always in conflict.  As the story opens, Chee is just arriving home from a long awaited vacation leave to Alaska, without Janet Peet.  Although still regretful, he has finally begun to come to terms with the fact that the love affair is doomed to fail and he will need to make his life without Janet at his side.

          The young, compassionate, intuitive female officer, Bernadette Manuelito, who is almost surely nursing a very big crush on Jim Chee, makes another appearance in this book.  She is as wonderfully complex and nuanced by Hillerman, as are Lephorn and Chee. 

          The story has enough twists and turns to resemble some of the bumpy, all but impassible roads traversing the wide open spaces of the Southwestern terrain of the Four Corners region.  I like to read Hillerman's books with a good map nearby, as the very vastness of the topography lends it's own realism to the everyday challenges that face all those who live in that area.   It is an area, where a 'near neighbor' may be 40 miles away across lands inhabited only by birds and beasts of the field.  It's human inhabitants are hearty and self-reliant and, mostly, comfortable with their solitude.  Driving to the store can take a half day and visitors can tell if someone is home by looking for the boot toping the fence post.  Tony Hillerman weaves the customs and existences of real people into the magic of his stories.

          Hunting Badger is another wonderful book which adds layers of understanding to our knowledge of the intuitive Lephorn and stoic Chee.  It is very entertaining and a quick read, although I wanted to draw it out for as long as possible to savor every morsel.  I'm heading off to the library to check out some of the first books in the series.  I try to re-read them every couple of years.  It's like visiting a really good friend.  You can just pick up where you left off the last time.

Carol Abbott, Reviewer

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