THE KILLING OF MONDAY BROWN

Yellowstone County deputy Kyle Old Wolf's relatives descend on Billings, Mont., shamus Phoebe Siegel with the plea that she go to bat for Kyle's cousin Matthew, accused of killing suspect Crow antiquities trader Monday Brown. It's a good choice, because family's important to Phoebe, as she showed in By Evil Means (1993)—there'll be more domestic drama with her brother Father Michael here—and because Phoebe turns out to be more sensitive than she knew, or wanted to be, to the spiritual values of the female Wolfs, who've formed a sweat lodge with Monday's wife, Ardena. Phoebe will need all the help and guidance she can get- -whether it's from Matthew's great-grandmother Anna, who appears to her in an uncanny posthumous vision, or from psychologist Jenni Cramer's white-folks' medicine—because menacing Jurgen Mueller, the front man for a European antiquities purchasing group, takes time out from beating up hookers and terrorizing Matthew (who's been freed on bail only to go into hiding) to inform Phoebe that he's got her number too. Prowell's bid for the Tony Hillerman audience has a colorful (and politically correct) background, a plot that doesn't skimp on complications, and an irresistible heroine with endless family problems—just about everything but the dramatic clarity that keeps the resonance of Hillerman's tales under control. (Author tour)