Tony Hillerman: People of Darkness (USA 2018)

From the Publisher:
The fourth novel in New York Times bestselling author Tony Hillerman's highly acclaimed Leaphorn and Chee series.
A dying man is murdered. A rich man's wife agrees to pay three thousand dollars for the return of a stolen box of rocks. A series of odd, inexplicable events is haunting Sergeant Jim Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police and drawing him alone into the Bad Country of the merciless Southwest, where everything good struggles to survive, including Chee. Because an assassin waits for him there, protecting a thirty-year-old vision that greed has sired and blood has nourished. And only one man will walk away.

Tony Hillerman: People of Darkness. A Leaphorn & Chee Mystery. Harper, ISBN: 9780062821768 (July, 2018), 305 p., $15.99.

Tony Hillerman: People of Darkness (USA 2009)

From the Publisher:
A dying man is murdered. A rich man's wife agrees to pay three thousand dollars for the return of a stolen box of rocks. A series of odd, inexplicable events is haunting Sergeant Jim Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police and drawing him alone into the Bad Country of the merciless Southwest, where nothing good can survive... including Chee. Because an assassin waits for him there, protecting a thirty-year-old vision that greed has sired and blood has nourished. And only one man will walk away.

Tony Hillerman: People of Darkness. A Leaphorn & Chee Mystery. HarperCollins, ISBN: 9780061795961 (March, 2009), eBook, 396 KB (ca. 336 p.), $7.99.

Tony Hillerman: People of Darkness (USA 1991)

From the Publisher:
Who would murder a dying man? Why would someone steal a box of rocks? And why would a rich man's wife pay $3,000 to get them back? These questions haunt Sgt. Jim Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police as he journeys into the scorching Southwest. But there, out in the Bad Country, a lone assassin waits for Chee to come seeking answers, waits ready and willing to protect a vision of death that for thirty years has been fed by greed and washed in blood.

Tony Hillerman: People of Darkness. HarperCollins, ISBN: 0061099155 (January, 1991), 293 p., $5.99.

Tony Hillerman: People of Darkness (USA 1988)

From the Publisher:
B. J. Vines, one of the richest men in New Mexico, was once a benefactor of the People of Darkness, a strange, peyote-eating Indian sect. But now he is their enemy and they are suspected of stealing from him a box containing a few military medals and some rocks, keepsakers, whose only apparent value would be to Vines himself. Sergeant Jim Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police is charged with finding the box, and to do that he must find the People of Darkness. But they prove highly elusive - virtually everyone in the cult with even the remotest association to Vines has since died mysteriously. As Chee closes in on the course of this deadly chain of incidences, a hired assassin, whose specialty is "perfect murders", is closing in on Chee.

Tony Hillerman: People of Darkness. Harper & Row / Perennial Mystery Library, ISBN: 0060809507 (September, 1988), 265 p., $3.95.

Tony Hillerman: People of Darkness (USA ca. 1985)

From the Publisher:
A NAVAJO VISION OF DEATH
The old Indian is already dying of cancer when someone tried to murder him. A box stolen from a rich white man's house is only filled with rocks -- but that man's wife has offered Sgt. Jim Chee $3000 to get it back. Out in the Bad Country under the scorching Southwest sun, a lone assassin waits for Chee and his girlfriend to come looking for answers... to come too close behind the secret behind a thirty-year-old vision of death... a secret fed greed, and washed in blood.

"Great Suspense." Chicago Tnbune
"Ingenious... Hillerman wraps everything up neatly." The New York Times

Tony Hillerman: People of Darkness. Avon Books, ISBN: 038057778X (January, 1982 / 6th printing, undated), 191 p., $2.95.

Tony Hillerman: People of Darkness (UK 1982)

From the Publisher:
Here is a highly unusual detective in a highly unusual thriller. Jim Chee is a Navajo Indian and a sergeant in the Tribal Police. His enquiries into a minor theft at the home of the immensely wealthy uranium magnate, B. J. Vines ("Vines has got more money than Saudi Arabia"), lead back to a thirty-year-old mystery, an oil rig explosion which blew to pieces everyone on the site. The present sheriff still believes that it wasn't an accident, for a foreman on the site, an Indian named Charley, had warned his Navajo crew to stay away that day. He claimed to have had a warning vision, which just might be true as he was a peyote chief who used drugs to induce visions.

Sergeant Chee wants to question some of those Navajo survivors, but he finds that all of them are dead, including Charley. And that they all died of cancer, which is statistically extraordinary. Furthermore, Charley's son, who succeeded as peyote chief, has just died, also of cancer -- and his body has been stolen from the university's cancer research centre. The case takes Jim Chee on to Charley's grandson -- and to a ruthless contract killer, Wolf, a formidable character who plans his murders as carefully and as skilfully as he prepares his oeufs en gelee. The tension mounts as the action accelerates, and there's a tremendous climax in which Chee, already nicked by one of Wolfs bullets, outmanoeuvres the killer in the desert. And there's a very surprising denouement.

This ingenious story fascinatingly combines modern technology and ancient mythology: the religious mysteries of the Navajo Indians are as relevant to the plot as is the mining of uranium. Tony Hillerman, whom we are delighted to welcome to our list, has a deep feeling for the landscape of the desert and for the beliefs of its people.

Tony Hillerman was born in Okla-homa and received his elementary education in a boarding school for Indian girls. He went on to the University of Oklahoma and then the University of New Mexico. He worked for seventeen years as a journalist before returning to the latter university as Professor of Journalism. He has written many books, both fiction and non-fiction, and his fiction is all based on his long-standing interest in Indian religions and cultures. So authentic is this material that his suspense novels are used in American schools to teach ethnography in a pleasantly assimilable way. Tony Hillerman now lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with his wife and six children.

Tony Hillerman: People of Darkness. A Novel Featuring Jim Chee. Gollancz, ISBN: 0575031336 (July, 1982), 202 p., £6.95.

Tony Hillerman: People of Darkness (USA 1982)

From the Publisher:
A NAVAJO VISION OF DEATH
The old Indian is already dying of cancer when someone tries to murder him. A box stolen from a rich white man's house is only filled with rocks -- but that man's wife has offered Sgt. Jim Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police $3000 to get it back. And out in the Bad Country under the scorching Southwest sun a lone assassin waits for Chee and his pretty Anglo girlfriend to come looking for answers...to come too close to the secret of the People of Darkness... the secret behind a thirty-year-old vision of death... the secret whispered by Navajo witches and fed by the white man's greed.

"Hillerman not only wraps everything up neatly: he also has conceived an ingenious. long-acting way of murder." The New York Times
"Great Suspense." Chicago Tnbune

Tony Hillerman: People of Darkness. A Sergeant Jim Chee Mystery. Avon Books, ISBN: 038057778X (January, 1982), 191 p., $2.25.

Tony Hillerman: People of Darkness (USA 1980)

From the Publisher:
While the bacteriologist watched, looking out of her laboratory window on the campus of the University of New Mexico North, the Indian (probably a Navajo) got out of his pickup truck, leaving his suitcase in it, and with a sick man's gait walked slowly to the patients' entrance. When he'd gone inside, a slender blond man, almost an albino, went over to the truck and leaned a box against it. And drove away in his own car.
It was almost noon when the truck blew up.

Sgt. Jim Chee, of the Navajo Tribal Police, who had only been stationed at Crown Point for a year, already had a number of things to contend with, including Rosemary Vines, the second Mrs. Vines. She'd summoned him because she'd had a burglary. "Someone broke in," she told him. "They got into BJ's quarters and stole a box of his keepsakes. I want to hire you to gett it back. BJ's at a hospital in Houston. I want it back before he gets home. I'll pay you $500 now and $2500 when you return the box."

"You can have the sheriff do it for free," Chee said.
"It will be simple enough for you," Mrs. Vines said. "The People of Darkness stole the box. You find them and get it back."
Chee resisted an impulse to ask Mrs. Vines what she meant by "People of Darkness." He'd never heard of them.
He was going to hear of them often -- as he became involved further and further in some extraordinary matters.

The New York Times Book Review, when it reviewed Tony Hillerman's last novel, The Listening Woman, said of his books, "Each has been a model of its kind: well-plotted, full of Indian lore and the feeling of the desert, never condescending, beautifully written." And the Albuquerque Joumal said, "Mystery fans across the nation should rejoice when they read Tony Hillerman's latest suspense novel, The Listening Woman."

Mystery fans (and reviewers) across the nation do rejoice when there's a new Tony Hillerman to read, and their rejoicing should be loud indeed over this new novel of his -- perhaps the best of a very fine lot.

Tony Hillerman: People of Darkness. A Harper Novel of Suspense. New York: Harper & Row, 1980, ISBN: 0060119071, 202 p., $9.95.