Debbie's Reviews > People of Darkness

I love the small, shallow treks into Navajo culture and traditions entertwined in an exciting weave of clarity and confusion. I use the spelling entertwine rather than intertwine intentionally. You enter into a bit of clarity and come out with a confusion, enter again into an area of clarity and again come out with confusion, all circling a mystery of who wants to kill a Navaho man who is already withing hours of death? Who wants to kill a dead Navajo. Navajos don't care about corpses, Mr. Hillerman explains why in a 3 mm dip into Navajo culture. On the other hand Whites don't care about dead Indians. This is clear. So, why was the corpse stolen and who wanted to steal it? And why? An Indian dead of bone cancer.

Jim Chee is called in on a burglary at the house of a very rich white man. The man is out of town and his wife wants the stolen box of mementos returned before her husband gets back home. She is certain the box was taken because it held items important to the local Peyote-based Church, The People of Darkness. He learns the dead Navajo was the Peyote Chief and had tried unsuccessfully to get some things from the husband. Chee investigates.

But it is not just one Navajo dead of cancer. It is 7 dead of either bone cancer or leukemia and one shot in the head, all of whom were either related or in the same church with 3 of them the Peyote Chief. That defies all mathematical probabilities. Especially the one who was shot. Chee saw the Navajo who was shot getting into a truck with another man after talking with him for a bit. The Navajo is the one who stole the box and Chee is going to recover it to return it. But when he gets there, way out on the rez, the box is gone but the Navajo is there, shot. The man he had come out there with knew Chee had seen them, believes he had followed them out there and Chee knows he is also in danger now.