Tony Hillerman’s The Wailing Wind uses most of same characters and people he has used in his previous mystery story books. The Wailing Wind has Navajo policeman Joe Leaphorn and his sidekick Jim Chee returning the background of Navajo Native American lore, culture and geography as seen in other Tony Hillerman books.
The character of Leaphorn was first used in Hillerman’s 1970’s book called The Blessing way. The 1980’s book titled The People of Darkness is where the Jim Chee character is first introduced. The Hillerman books since the 1980’s have had these two main characters closely working together to solve other murder mysteries.
The Wailing Wind book has a young Navajo officer named Bernadette Manulito finding a body on the Navajo reservation but she makes mistakes with the crime scene which puts her in trouble with her employers. The book deals with a murder on the Navajo reservation along with the background setting of white men looking for one of the lost and legendary lost gold mines in the American Southwest.
Officer Chee helps the errant officer Manulito to replace the crime scene evidence she should have not removed while simultaneously trying to solve the crime. The story line has an oil Tycoon, Wiley Denton, obsessed with finding the lost Golden Calf Gold mine, suspected of murdering his wife. The body found at the crime scene belongs to Mr. Wiley’s wife. The scenery, characters and story line are cleverly intertwined to provide a great murder mystery story.
The book is a good mystery murder drama set in the American Southwest. If you’re into mystery murder books then this book is for you.
