Novelist Tony Hillerman dies at 83
Published 11:14 pm Sunday, October 26, 2008
PHOENIX — Tony Hillerman, author of the acclaimed Navajo Tribal Police mystery novels and creator of two of the unlikeliest of literary heroes — Navajo police officers Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee — died Sunday of pulmonary failure. He was 83.
Hillerman’s daughter, Anne Hillerman, said her father’s health had been declining in the last couple years and that he was at Presbyterian Hospital in Albuquerque when he died.
Lt. Joe Leaphorn, introduced in “The Blessing Way” in 1970, was an experienced police officer who understood, but did not share, his people’s traditional belief in a rich spirit world. Officer Jim Chee, introduced in “People of Darkness” in 1978, was a younger officer studying to become a “hathaali” — Navajo for “shaman.”
Hillerman’s breakthrough was “Skinwalkers,” published in 1987 — the first time he put both characters and their divergent world views together. It sold 430,000 hardcover copies, paving the way for “A Thief of Time,” which made several best-seller lists. In all, he wrote 18 books in the Navajo series, the most recent titled “The Shape Shifter.”
The most acclaimed of them, including “Talking God” and “The Coyote Waits,” explore the conflict between cultural assimilation and the pull of the old ways.
