LIeutenant Joe Leaphorn

One of the two main characters, Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn is a recurring detective in Tony Hillerman's novels. Leaphorn is middle-aged, and his beloved wife Emma has recently died. Leaphorn is grief-stricken, has lost weight and often finds himself talking aloud to Emma in their home. He uses vacation time to investigate a crime in Washington, DC because he cannot face the prospect of going on vacation alone.

Leaphorn has moved away from the traditional Navajo culture of his childhood and is now more a pragmatic agnostic. While he believes in a God who created a world of causes and effects, he retains the Navajo love of order, harmony and balance. This need often drives him to probe more deeply into crimes than other police officers do. Leaphorn uses western logic to analyze and solve crimes, although he has some appreciation for the beliefs of more traditional...