Hunting Badger

The trail of a manhunt following a violent casino robbery along the Utah-Arizona border draws in not only Sergeant Jim Chee of the Navajo Police, but the now retired Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn. Fans of the series will delight at the inclusion of both characters in Hillerman's newest story. Newcomers will be immediately at ease with George Guidall's adroit performance. After more than a dozen Hillerman audiobooks, Guidall's familiarity with the characters and locale result in perfect pacing and astute portraits. His insight captures the conflicts of the Navaho traditional values in contemporary times. Guidall's masterful storytelling is perfectly in sync with Hillerman's narrative. R.F.W. An AudioFile Earphones Award winner. (c) AudioFile, Portland, Maine

January 3, 2000
Hillerman returns to his time-tested heroes, Navajo tribal police officers Sergeant Jim Chee and Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn (retired), for yet another satisfying mystery. For a listener, comfort comes with familiarity: the vivid sense of time and place conveyed. This is thanks in part to Guidall's reading, relaxed in its pacing yet sharp in its character development (demonstrating, once again, why he's considered to be among the best in the spoken-audio field). Based in part on a real 1998 case, the story concerns the armed robbery of a casino on the Ute reservation. The suspects have disappeared, and Chee has to see if he can find a local link to the crime. This involves lots of legwork, talking to local characters holed up in their remote trailer homes. Here Hillerman is in top form, creating dialogue that will bring listeners into real sympathy with the people and proceedings described. Also good on audio is Hillerman's strict sense of linear narrative, his respect for straight-ahead storytelling. Simultaneous release with the HarperCollins hardcover.

November 29, 1999
Picking up a new Hillerman book has the high comfort level of revisiting a favorite old Western hotel like the Bishop's Lodge in Santa Fe or the Ahwani at Yosemite--the accommodations will always be first class and the scenery spectacular. Not that Hillerman ignores the passage of time: his two Navajo cops, Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn, age and change as we all do. There's a moment in the novel when Chee meets with his retired former boss at the Anasazi Inn dining room in Farmington, N. Mex. "He had looked right past the corner table and the stocky old duffer sitting there with a plump middle-aged woman without recognizing Joe Leaphorn.... He had seen the Legendary Lieutenant in civilian attire before, but the image he carried in his mind was of Leaphorn in uniform." As for the prickly Sergeant Chee, he has to contend with physical problems as well as with the end of one romance and the beginning of another--not to mention the very real possibility of being picked off by a sniper during the search for the men who robbed a casino owned by the Ute tribe. In a rare author's note, Hillerman talks about an actual 1998 case in which the FBI turned the killing of a Colorado police officer into a gigantic fiasco. The shadow of that failed investigation hangs over the search in this book, leading to many anti-FBI jibes ("If the Federal Bureau of Ineptitude says it, it must be true," another retired cop tells Leaphorn). As usual in recent Hillerman books, the action goes on mostly inside the minds of his two lead characters. But there is one splendid helicopter ride into Gothic Creek Canyon that should speed up the calmest heart, several new insights into the mysteries of Navajo culture and a story with enough twists and surprises to make readers glad they checked in. Major ad/promo; 15-city TV satellite tour; simultaneous HarperAudio.