The Wailing Wind

by Tony Hillerman

Book Overview

Don't miss the TV series, Dark Winds, based on the Leaphorn, Chee, & Manuelito novels, now on AMC and AMC+! "Tony Hillerman's novels are like no others. His insightful portrayal of the vast Navajo... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060194448
• ISBN13: 9780060194444
• Release Date: May 2002
• Publisher: Harper
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 1.17 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

"The Wailing Wind" is more than hot air!

...--to find Tony Hillerman, easily one of America's more popular writers, back in full form and fashion with "The Wailing Wind."Hillerman, following the last two or three works that seemed to have been disappointments (somewhat) even to his most ardent followers, takes this one and demonstrates that after 14 previous novels featuring Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee and the Navajo tribal world he can still spin a tale.Drawing from a previous incident in an earlier work, Hillerman opens "The Wailing Wind" with officer Bernadette Manuelito discovering a body in an abandoned pickup truck. In addition to reporting the scene, of course, she makes some procedural mistakes and Hillerman is off and running. Besides Officer Manuelito taking a larger role in Hillerman's works, the fusion and relationship between Leaphorn and Chee is never better and the chemistry continues to work well. Chee's young--and sometimes hasty--ways are always tempered by Leaphorn's experience and older judgment. What a team!Hillerman's revelations and plot summations are not always so complicated and involved, as in this case, but his devotion to great character development, presentation of landscape, atmosphere, native American culture and history, and sound logic in thought and deed make "The Wailing Wind" one of his best works. This is a relief, of course, to his readers, who are always one breath away of thinking that the last one's the last one! So far so good.In "The Wailing Wind," murder, greed, jealousy, and a bit of madness play into the darker side of the book's development. Fortunately, Hillerman is sound in his delivery of good and just practices and human beings. Here, while the book may not leave the reader mesmerized from page to page to the extent you can't put it down, the author takes control of all developments and his pacing and nuance never let the story get away from him. Perhaps more than anything, his works are about relationships rather than "who done it." Either way, Hillerman's a man/author of the Southwest whose appeal seems universal. "The Wailing Wind" is worth the time and effort. In fact, it's a pleasure....

Another Fine Insallment of the Hillerman Series

The Wailing Wind is the latest effort from Tony Hillerman. It's classic Hillerman: a fine story, well-conceived and carefully put together, with a fair share of suspense to keep the pages turning quickly. Hillerman fans will recognize their favorite cast of characters; this edition sees Jim Chee, Joe Leaphorn, fledgeling officer "Bernie" Manuelito, and relatively new character Louisa Bourbonette team up to unearth the connection between a new homicide victim and an old missing person case. The prose is well-written, and reads quickly. The story is quite good, but not his finest (I personally recommend A Thief of Time). In The Wailing Wind, we get to learn whether Jim Chee and Bernie will take a few fumbling steps toward a budding romance, or whether Hillerman keeps us on the hook for another year. If you're a Hillerman fan, or if you're not yet, I think you'll like this story a lot.

humorous, atmospheric and absorbing

When rookie Navajo police officer Bernadette Manuelito discovers a white man curled in his pickup in a remote gulch and puts her hand on his ankle to assure herself he is dead, she sets in motion a chain of events that reverberates through a murder investigation, rocks her promising future and ratchets up the tension in her budding romance with Sergeant Jim Chee.Manuelito, spooked by the Navajo taboo against contact with the dead, not only misses the bullet hole in his back, but fills the long wait for the ambulance by making a botanical survey of the area, depositing her seed collection in an old tobacco tin she finds lying on the ground. The FBI throws a fit at her mishandling of the crime scene - and they don't even know about the tobacco tin. Manuelito turned it over to Chee after finding some gold dust in with her seeds.Chee goes to his old boss, retired Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn, whose interest is already piqued by the dead man's collection of papers relating to a mythical gold mine which harks back to an old case. Wealthy Wiley Denton, obsessed by that gold mine, shot a con man who tried to rob him when his con went bad. Open-and-shut save for one thing. Denton's young wife went missing the same day. People said she was in league with the dead con man, but to Leaphorn it never quite fit.Manuelito figures prominently in Hillerman's well-constructed plot, as she, Chee and Leaphorn each follow separate threads. Especially elegant is the convergence of Manuelito's tribal sourcing and Chee's police work; their complementary methods dovetailing to further the plot, their own complex individuality and their romantic attraction. But the case isn't solved until Leaphorn unravels the mystery of the ghost wailing heard on the night of the original shooting by some kids trespassing on the spooky abandoned ordnance depot where it all builds to an atmospheric, suspenseful and chilling climax. This is award-winning Hillerman at his best.

Another great Hillerman mystery!

If you have enjoyed any of Tony Hillerman's previous novels set in the "Four Corners", you will surely enjoy reading "The Wailing Wind". As before, Mr. Hillerman brings together the legendary Joe Leaphorn with younger Sergeant Jim Chee. Together they work to solve a recent murder as well as reopen an old homicide investigation that seemed to everyone to be an open and shut case, to everyone but "Lieutenant" Leaphorn. With the addition of Officer Bernie Manuelito and Leaphorn's lady Professor (introduced in 'Coyote Waits'), the new foursome make an odd, but compelling quartet. As always, there are fascinating bits of Navajo mythology expertly weaved into the tale.My thanks to Mr. Hillerman for another fine mystery that keeps you interested until the final chapter, and hungry for the next book!

Working Backwards

It is one of those accidents of a reviewer's fate that both of the mysteries I just finished reading turn on events in the past, rather than current mysteries. Each deals with this differently (the other was Laurie King's "Justice Hall"), but the reader knows from the beginning that it is the unfolding of a past tragedy that holds the keys to a puzzle taking place in the present. In Hillerman's tale, the past is recovered in fragmentary moments until it becomes a grim intruder in the present.In the present, Officer Bernadette Manuelito finds a man curled up dead on a truck seat in the desert. Mistakenly assuming it was an accidental drunken death she inadvertently mishandles what turns out to be a crime scene and finds herself in trouble. And so, Sgt. Jim Chee and Lt. Joe Leaphorn enter the case partly to help Bernadette, and partly to carry out agendas of their own. Chee because he dislikes the FBI and likes Bernadette, and Leaphorn because evidence in this case reminds him of another one where Wiley Denton killed a swindler, and Wiley's wife vanished without a trace.There is a Navaho legend of a Wailing Woman seeking in the desert for a lost child. Years ago, when Denton made his kill in self-defense, several students heard a woman's cries out in the nearly deserted bunkers of Fort Wingate. But it was Halloween, and the police filed the report away, more interested in the killing they could see. Years later Leaphorn is still haunted by that story and has never stopped wondering where Mrs. Linda Denton had gone.The three investigators pursue the case separately and together, until the threads begin to point to a set of conclusions that will both surprise and please the reader. One cannot help but enjoy a tale which mixes Indian ways with police work, where lore provides just as many clues as the forensic specialists do. Hillerman paints with a fine light brush, never using too many words where few will do, but never being so sparse that believability suffers.The characters, of course, are treasures. Waitresses and professors, shamans and tycoons all develop enough presence to remain memorable. No one appears by accident, whether they provide clues or comic relief. Leaphorn's relationship with Louisa Bourbonette developed with dry wisdom, and the chemistry between Jim Chee and Officer Manuelito intensifies, providing some interesting counterpoint to the story at hand. This is something like the fifteenth of Hillerman's tales of the Southwestern reservations, and he shows no sign of slacking off.