THE DARK WIND

Strongly atmospheric but far less suspenseful than People of Darkness, this second case for Jim Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police (who's also an apprentice Navajo chanter/shaman) moves into the neighboring Hopi culture on the joint Southwest reservation—as Chee ponders possible connections among a quartet of simultaneous cases. There's a body found on Hopi territory—its feet and hands skinned: a sign of witchcraft afoot. There's a robbery by ex-con Joseph Musket, who has now weirdly disappeared. There's vandalism of a Hopi windmill (by angry, dispossessed Navajos. . . or by Hopis disturbed by a violation of ritual?). And, beyond Chee's official jurisdiction, there's a Mesa plane-crash-cum-murder, apparently involving drug-smuggling: where did the drugs disappear to? Chee broods about all these crimes; he himself is suspected by the FBI of complicity in the drug-caper. And, before he traps the murderer and exposes a revenge-motive, there are visits to a prison, a medicine-man, and (repeatedly) the bleak mesa. A few nice twists, with Hillerman's moodily fine prose in full Southwest regalia; but this time the darkness is murky almost as often as it's chilling—in the slowest, most relentlessly introspective case yet for the Navajo Tribal Police.