SOURCE: Roush, Jan. “The Developing Art of Tony Hillerman.” Western American Literature 28, no. 2 (summer 1993): 99-110.

In the following essay, Roush asserts that the novels in Hillerman's Leaphorn/Chee series deserve to be recognized as “anthropological mysteries,” applauding the author's creation of works that explicate the Navajo concept of “hozho,” or harmony, and serve as entertainment as well.

For almost a decade now Tony Hillerman has ensnared readers with his fast-paced and tightly plotted mysteries about crime on the reservations of the Southwest. Using desolate backdrops of sandswept, sparsely populated land, he weaves stories of murder and intrigue which fuse the traditional Western of Zane Grey and Louis L'Amour with the modern Western of detective fiction made popular by Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler to create a new genre: anthropological mystery.

Though Hillerman's trademark is making life on the Navajo Reservation so vivid with anthropological detail that his readers...