Tony Hillerman wrote The Ghostway in 1984. It is one of a series of books about a character named Jim Chee, the sheriff of the Navajo tribal police. In The Ghostway, he has to solve the mystery of a series of murders that take place on the Navajo reservation after the Federal Witness Protection Program sends a former convicted felon to live there. Jim Chee goes after the felon, who he believes is responsible for everything that had occurred there after his arrival.
Another part of the plot takes place in Los Angeles, California, where two men kill each other in a laundromat. The book also involves a runaway teenager, a car theft ring, an aluminum trailer, and the abandoned sacred home of a Navajo Indian, called a hogan. The abandoned hogan was once home to an Indian whose spirit is now trapped in the bad part of the Los Angeles area. In addition to solving the crimes that are going on around the reservation, Jim Chee must also aid the lost spirit in returning to his home through Navajo healing rituals.
The Ghostway was the sixth book by Tony Hillerman, and it was published by Harper Collins. Like Hillerman's other Jim Chee stories, it is a mixture of mystery and science fiction with many references to Navajo culture and beliefs scattered around the book. The Ghostway was reissued to tie in with Coyote Waits, another book in the series that was written in 1990.
