Tony Hillerman, author of the Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee mysteries, set on or near the Navajo Indian Reservation, has died at 83.
I started reading these mysteries when I moved out here, as Colorado's far southwest corner includes both old Anasazi ruins and the Southern Ute reservation. Hillerman's trick, common to many mystery writers, is to make
descriptions of his real subject matter - the remote land, and the Navajos' relationship to it, and their attempts to adapt to modernity - palatable by mixing them in with a gripping story and interesting characters. (Certainly, the notion of Jim Chee as a sort of "modern orthodox" Navajo had some personal resonance; the best characters are the ones that are like you in some way, but different enough to permit some distance and objectivity.)
In b-school orientation, we did a childish little "multicultural" exercise where we were each given slips of paper describing one of two different "cultures." One of the cultures was very loud and in-your-face, the other tended to avoid eye contact and be more reticent in general. The extreme contrast reminded me of the Navajo aversion to eye contact and willingness to let conversational silence go unfilled (but that could just as well have been a New York-Minnesota culture clash as well). Naturally, the lesson had long since been learned.
Hillerman's later novels suffered a little from age, I think, although I kept buying them. The perpetrators were usually obvious by mid-book, the Navajo story line itself a little played out, and the personal stories of the characters seemed to have settled to conclusions of sorts. But that doesn't obviate the value of his earlier work, even until 2000 or so.