The story is set in New Mexico, where Jim Chee takes a position at the Crownpoint, NM office of the Navajo Tribal Police. New crimes center around a very wealthy white man and several Navajos he befriended nearly 30 years earlier, helping them support their church. His wealth arose from uranium, in high demand back then, more than could be made from oil.
The novel was well-received: "well-written and gripping . . . [set] against a background of authentic Indian culture, an incredible achievement for a non-Indian writer." and "thoroughly splendid work: moody, atmospheric, complex without contrivance, and properly unsettling." A review written in 2010 was still impressed with the novel, saying "the great triumph of Hillerman’s art lies in the way he was able to weave this Native American theme into the story, along with all the accompanying cultural background, without ever compromising the mystery."
Plot summary
A bacteriologist in the cancer research hospital, waiting for lab results, sees a blond-haired man move something from his car to a pick-up truck parked in an illegal space. She sees a tow truck pull the pick-up away; within seconds, the truck explodes, killing the operators of the tow truck. A few months later, Jim Chee is asked by Mrs. Vines to find a box stolen from her house, wanting to hire him off-duty. The box contains mementos and she would like it back before her husband returns; she thinks Emerson Charley is the thief. Mr. Vines returns, telling Chee not to bother with the task his wife asked him to do. Sheriff Sena is angry at Chee for talking with Mr. and Mrs. Vines. Sena shares the story of the six Navajo men in the crew under Dillon Charley who did not go to work at the oil field years back because Charley had a vision saying something bad would happen that day, which was true. Chee learns that the man whose truck exploded a few months back was Emerson Charley, son of Dillon and head of the People of Darkness church, who has been in the hospital at the University of New Mexico since that day, ill with cancer. Sena believes the motion sensor bomb in the pick-up truck was meant for Emerson, despite his fatal disease.
When Colton Wolf learns about Emerson Charley's death, he goes to the hospital morgue to find, steal and bury his body, which the cancer group wants to autopsy. At a local rug auction, Tomas Charley tells Jim Chee that his father's body was stolen from the hospital. Tomas tells Chee where the stolen box is and that it contains rocks and military medals. Chee meets Mary Landon and asks her out. Next day, they go to fetch the box from the malpais, and encounter Tomas Charley's dead body, killed a minute before. The killer is the same man who met Tomas at the rug auction after Chee did. Colton, the killer, does not like witnesses, so he shoots Chee and sets fire to his vehicle.
Chee is recovering in the hospital after surgery for his gunshot wound, visited by a string of lawmen. Sheriff Sena is driven by the loss of his older brother in that oil field explosion. Sgt. Hunt of the Albuquerque Police Department tells Chee of the history of killings attached to the man who shot him. A sketch of his face from what the bacteriologist saw matches the face Chee saw. Martin from the FBI visits next. Knowing about this man and his methods proves useful when Chee awakens about 3 am to find he has a roommate, and that the blond haired man is in the hospital corridor. Chee hides in the false ceiling space, coming down to find that the other patient was killed by the silenced weapon in his stead, and the nurse is killed as well. Chee calls the Albuquerque Police, but they do not find the killer, who drives off in a stolen car. Chee and Mary Landon research the events of the oil field explosion and what happened to the six Navajos who did not go to work that day. So far, four of the six died of leukemia and one of another cancer, within 5 years of the explosion, highly unusual. They hope to find the body of the sixth, to see what an autopsy might reveal. They realize that is why Emerson Charley's body was stolen from the hospital.
Chee and Mary Landon learn where the sixth man is buried from his sister, up in the Bisti badlands. Colton pretends to the NTP that he is Martin, the FBI agent, so that the NTP will put out radio calls for Chee, which Colton can hear with his police band radio. Chee and Landon find the long-interred body of the sixth man, and can see abnormal bone growth on his skeleton below his pouch, still carrying the mole amulet. Chee puts a note on Colton's car. The note is written on the check Vines gave Chee, saying that Vines will give Colton up to law enforcement. Chee tosses a boulder in his pick-up truck, which explodes from the bomb Colton placed in it. Colton drives away. Mary and Chee wait until daylight when a pipeline company helicopter rescues them. Chee reaches Vines mansion by helicopter just after Colton arrived through the heavy snows of the night. Colton kills Vines, and Mrs. Vines shoots Colton in self-defense.
Vines gave mole-shaped amulets to the six Navajo men on the crew, meant to symbolize their religion, but made of pitchblende. The radiation brought early death by cancer, as the men carried the amulets in a pouch worn on the body. Vines was not a newcomer to the area, but the geologist Carl Lebeck. Lebeck was not killed in the explosion because he rigged it. He revealed himself to Chee by what he failed to note on the reports 30 years earlier – uranium is being mined now, above the level where oil was expected in the core samples Lebeck analyzed, but was not noted. Vines did not want an active oil field in someone else's ownership when he could make a fortune by buying the lease for the land and selling the rights for the uranium. That white man acted like Navajo witch, in a twist ending.
Title
The Navajo word that means mole, the underground hunting animal, if literally translated, also means the people of darkness. The amulet used for the church started by Dillon Charley was a mole, a gift made by the character Vines in honor of his own money being made by mining uranium below the soil, and the earlier escape from the 1948 oil field explosion for the church members.
Characters
Sgt Jim Chee: Sergeant in the Navajo Tribal Police, who recently began work at the Crownpoint, NM office. His college degree is from U of NM in anthropology. He is training to be a yataalii. He received an offer to work for the FBI as the story opens, needing to reply in a few weeks.
Trixie Dodge: Officer of Navajo Tribal Police at the Crownpoint office
Henry Becenti: Retired NTP whose position Chee now fills; he explains the past relationship with Sena.
Lawrence ‘Gordo’ Sena: Sheriff of Valencia County and involved in Valencia County policing for nearly 30 years. He has a long time interest in the oil field explosion in early 1948 because his older brother was killed by it. His anger, rooted in his grief at the loss of his brother when the six Navajo men survived, impedes his success in solving the crime of 1948.
Mrs. Rosemary Vines: Second wife of B. J. Vines who asks Jim Chee to find a stolen box before her husband returns from medical treatment.
Mr B. J. Vines: Very wealthy man in his fifties with full white beard; he gained his wealth by selling leases to Anaconda for uranium rights on his land he acquired as a ranch about 30 years prior. He suffered a stroke and uses a wheel chair, and is a collector of trophies and mementos. In younger days, once he became wealthy, he was a big game hunter.
Carl Lebeck: Geologist present at the oil field when the explosion occurred in early 1948 where so many were killed, his job to log the core samples taken in the search for oil at that spot. Returns to the area as B. J. Vines.
Dillon Charley: Navajo worker on the Vines ranch, buried on the present estate since 1953. He started a sect of the Native American Church during the 1940s that used peyote as part of the religious rites, though it was at that time banned on the Navajo reservation. Later US Supreme Court Decision allowed the religious use of peyote.
Emerson Charley: Son of Dillon, continued as head of church started by father, reviving it recently. In this novel, he is dying of leukemia at the University of New Mexico hospital. After he dies, Wolf steals his body and buries it in a landfill.
Tomas Charley: Navajo son of Emerson and his Acoma wife, who took the box of rocks and medals from the Vines mansion. He is murdered by Wolf.
Rudolph Charley: Younger brother to Tomas, and head of the peyote church after Tomas dies. He held a ceremony to honor his brother after his death, where Chee and Mary Landon met Mrs. Musket.
Five Navajo men: Men who died young of leukemia or another cancer, but were spared death on the day of the oil field explosion, being advised by Dillon Charley, their supervisor as roustabouts for that project, that something bad would happen that day. All carried amulets given as gifts by Vines. Roscoe Sam, Joseph Sam, Woody Begay, Rudolph Becenti, and Windy Tsossie are the five men.
Mrs. Fannie Kinlicheenie: Sister to Woody Begay, who knows when he died and where he is buried She was active in the church with her brother. When the Enemy Way ceremonial did not cure her brother, she knew there was a witch involved, and the evil would turn back on him. She believed the witch was Dillon Charley, who died after her brother.
Dr. Sherman Huff: Doctor at the UNM cancer hospital who explains cancer to Chee and then mentions the local cancer clusters. He finds four of the six Navajos on the state's cancer registry.
Mrs. Romana Musket: sister-in-law to Windy Tsossie. She knows when he died and where he was buried, near the Bisti, where Chee and Mary Landon go to see his remains for signs of cancer. They see the growth on the bones near the amulet he wore in life.
Colton Wolf: Blond-haired man with a knack for making his own mechanical devices, including guns and silencers, a true loner. He works as a hired hit man getting his directions via post office box from a person known only as Boxholder to him. He longs to know the name of his real father and find his mother; he was known as Colton Fry in his childhood. He wants to know who has been hiring him.
Boxholder: Codename for the person who hires Colton Wolf these many years for contract murders by many means.
Mary Landon: School teacher from town near Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a white woman or Anglo who now teaches in Crown Point; she and Chee meet at a local rug auction.
Martin: FBI agent who tells Chee of the trail of crimes over ten years tied to this man, and that he and Mary are the first known by Wolf to witness him in the commission of a crime, and survive.
Sergeant Hunt: Agent from the Albuquerque NM police department in charge of unsolved homicides, where the cancer research hospital is located, and where the pick-up truck exploded. He shows Chee a sketch of the man who shot him, based on the earlier crime in Albuquerque, where an employee observed Wolf, unknown to him.
Geography
In his 2011 book Tony Hillerman's Navajoland: Hideouts, Haunts, and Havens in the Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee Mysteries, author Laurance D. Linford has listed the following 24 geographical locations, real and fictional, mentioned in People of Darkness.[1]
Gumshoe Review notes that Hillerman is the master of his genre, even upon rereading almost 30 years later:
But in re-reading People of Darkness (originally published in 1980) I am reminded that Tony Hillerman remains the undisputed master of this genre. As a tribal policeman, Jim Chee treads a frequently indistinct line between the modern, white world and the traditions of his forebears – treads it sometimes uneasily, and at other times with a wry sense of humor. And the great triumph of Hillerman’s art lies in the way he was able to weave this Native American theme into the story, along with all the accompanying cultural background, without ever compromising the mystery.[2]
The Sun-Sentinel says that Tony Hillerman has attained a level of consistent excellence with his offbeat series of mysteries detailing the adventures of Officer John Chee and Lt. Joe Leaphorn of the Navajo Tribal Police. Not only are the stories well-written and gripping, but they also play against a background of authentic Indian culture, an incredible achievement for a non-Indian writer.[3]
Hillerman is once again among the New Mexico Navajos, but Joe Leaphorn isn't the sleuth this time. Instead it's Jim Chee, a young Navajo reservation detective who's also an up-and-coming tribal medicine man. But before Jim has to make his big life decision--join the FBI or become a tribal leader?--he lands in the middle of a bizarre case: the wife of a local white tycoon asks Jim to recover a box of her husband's trinkets stolen by young Tomas Charley, who's the third generation in a family of leaders of a peyote cult, "the People of Darkness." Does this theft of seemingly worthless stuff connect with a bomb-murder attempt on Tomas' father, who's dying of cancer anyway? Or with a bloody 1948 oil-rig explosion that almost killed Tomas' grandfather? As Tomas[sic Chee] sleuths, along with nice, tough, white teacher Mary, Hillerman also follows the cool, disturbed hired killer who, having failed to kill Tomas' father, now steals his dead body from the hospital! And soon the killer is after Tomas [sic Chee] and Mary (who've seen his face), while they're busy discovering that all of those peyote-club members involved in that 1948 explosion have died of cancer. So there's a final showdown-shootout--and a solution involving uranium deposits, a neat secret past identity (a la Agatha Christie), and a truly chilling modus operandi. Hillerman may overdo the Indian vs. white identity crisis this time--Mary and Jim talk too much--but otherwise this is thoroughly splendid work: moody, atmospheric, complex without contrivance, and properly unsettling. Top work from a top talent.[4]
Allusions to real events
After the development of the atomic bomb, the demand for uranium, previously of little value, grew sharply. Fortunes were made in the Four Corners area of the US during the period of high demand, for example, by Charles Steen.
The lands of the eastern portion of the Navajo Nation, in New Mexico, are called the Checkerboard reservation. This arose from the way in which land was given to railroads in the 19th century, leaving questions of who owns land, a problem for police jurisdictions among others.
Related Research Articles
Anthony Grove Hillerman was an American author of detective novels and nonfiction works, best known for his mystery novels featuring Navajo Nation Police officers Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee. Several of his works have been adapted for film and television.
Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn is a fictional character created by the twentieth-century American mystery writer Tony Hillerman. He is one of the two officers of the Navajo Tribal Police who are featured in a number of Hillerman's novels. The other officer is Jim Chee.
Jim Chee is one of two Navajo Tribal Police detectives in a series of mystery novels by Tony Hillerman. Unlike his superior Joe Leaphorn, the "Legendary Lieutenant", Chee is a staunch believer in traditional Navajo culture; indeed, he is studying to be a traditional healer at the same time that he is a police officer.
The Fallen Man is a crime novel by American writer Tony Hillerman, the twelfth in the Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee Navajo Tribal Police series, first published in 1996.
Dance Hall Of The Dead is a crime novel by American writer Tony Hillerman, the second in the Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee Navajo Tribal Police series, first published in 1973. It features police Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn. It is set primarily in Ramah Reservation and the Zuni village in New Mexico, both in the American Southwest.
Talking God is a crime novel by American writer Tony Hillerman, the ninth in the Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee Navajo Tribal Police series, published in 1989.
Skinwalkers is a crime novel by American writer Tony Hillerman, the seventh in the Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee Navajo Tribal Police series, published in 1986. The film version, Skinwalkers, was adapted for television for the PBS Mystery! series in 2002.
The Ghostway is a crime novel by American writer Tony Hillerman, the sixth in the Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee Navajo Tribal Police series. It was first published in 1984 and features Jim Chee.
A Thief of Time is a crime novel by American writer Tony Hillerman, the eighth in the Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee Navajo Tribal Police series, first published in 1988. It was adapted for television as part of the PBS Mystery! series in 2004.
Skinwalkers is a 2002 mystery television film based on the novel of the same name by Tony Hillerman, one of his series of mysteries set against contemporary Navajo life in the Southwest. It features an all-Native cast, with Adam Beach and Wes Studi playing officers Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn. It was produced as part of the PBS Mystery! series, filmed on the Navajo reservation and directed by Chris Eyre.
Coyote Waits is a crime novel by American writer Tony Hillerman, the tenth in the Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee Navajo Tribal Police series, first published in 1990.
The First Eagle is a crime novel by American writer Tony Hillerman, the thirteenth in the Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee Navajo Tribal Police series, first published in 1998.
Hunting Badger is a crime novel by American writer Tony Hillerman, the fourteenth in the Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee Navajo Tribal Police series, first published in 1999.
The Wailing Wind is a crime novel by American writer Tony Hillerman, the fifteenth in the Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee Navajo Tribal Police series, first published in 2002. It is a New York Times best-seller.
The Sinister Pig is a crime novel by American writer Tony Hillerman, the sixteenth in the Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee Navajo Tribal Police series, first published in 2003. It was a New York Times best-seller.
Skeleton Man is a crime novel by American writer Tony Hillerman, the seventeenth in the Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee Navajo Tribal Police series, first published in 2004. It was a New York Times best-seller
The Shape Shifter is a crime novel by American writer Tony Hillerman, the eighteenth in the Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee Navajo Tribal Police series, first published in 2006. It was a New York Times best-seller and the last Chee/Leaphorn novel by Hillerman published before Hillerman's death on October 26, 2008.
Song of the Lion is a 2017 release and the third Leaphorn/Chee mystery written by Anne Hillerman, daughter of the series originator Tony Hillerman. The title is derived from Navajo culture, which speaks of a cougar, Náshdóítsoh, who protects the Navajo people. After her father's 2008 death, Anne continued the series. The Navajo Nation on which the story takes place, is a geographical area that spans 27,000 square miles over the connecting borders of the US states of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. According to the NN itself, it encompasses 500 Indian tribes on 318 reservations.
Spider Woman's Daughter is a crime novel by American writer Anne Hillerman, released in 2013. It is the first [[Leaphorn/Chee mystery written by her, the daughter of the series originator Tony Hillerman. The title of the book is derived from Native American legends. Spider Woman was the one who taught the Navajo people how to weave. Officer Bernadette Manuelito is the daughter of a weaver, and married to Officer Jim Chee. He nicknamed her "Spider Woman's Daughter" for her ability to weave together a complex array of evidence to solve a crime. In her debut effort to continue the series, Anne Hillerman has given the reader an exceptionally detailed plot and long list of characters. One reviewer at Goodreads.com counted 46 named characters.
Dark Winds is an American psychological thriller television series created by Graham Roland based on the Leaphorn & Chee novel series by Tony Hillerman. It premiered on AMC and AMC+ on June 12, 2022, with the first season consisting of six episodes. After its premiere, the series was renewed for a six-episode second season, which premiered on July 30, 2023. In September 2023, the series was renewed for a third season.
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