One might say that, as an "ethnic detective," Joe Leaphorn traces his roots all the way back to the first detective fiction, Edgar Allan Poe's tales of ratiocination featuring the French detective C. Auguste Dupin.

However, Joe Leaphorn brings cultural understanding to the law enforcement profession in a much more realistic and meaningful manner than did Poe's Frenchman or, say, than Earl Derr Biggers' detective Charlie Chan brought any type of Asian sensibility to the job of solving crimes. Nonetheless, Hillerman certainly follows in the footsteps of such ethnic detective writers as Biggers or the more critically acclaimed Arthur Upfield or Chester Himes.

But Hillerman has combined elements of many genres and sub-genres in his fiction.

Certainly, by setting his story against the backdrop of the Southwest and including such themes as survival against the odds in the wild, Hillerman borrows from both the western novel...