Finding Moon is different from most of Hillerman's recent fiction for two reasons. First, it is set in Southeast Asia rather than in the American Southwest.

Because Hillerman is not as familiar with Asia as a setting as he is with New Mexico, the novel lacks the specific sense of place that contributes to the success of his Navajo mysteries. While the cock fighting scene set in Manila is effectively written and offers a sense of place, the scenes set in Vietnam and Cambodia are far too generic to capture the feel for those two countries. There is no equivalent in Finding Moon, for instance, to the wonderful description in his latest Navajo mystery, Fallen Man, of a drive down the Colorado mountains to the New Mexico desert as two air masses collide to create a wall of fog that slides down the mountain like a...