Skeleton Man (novel)
 1st edition | |
Jim Chee/Joe Leaphorn Navajo Tribal Police Series | |
| Author | Tony Hillerman |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Detective |
| Publisher | HarperCollins |
| Published | 2004 – present |
| Media type | Print (hardcover and paperback) |
| Preceded by | The Sinister Pig, 2003 |
| Followed by | The Shape Shifter, 2006 |
Skeleton Man is a New York Times best-seller[1] and is seventeenth in the Chee/Leaphorn Navajo Tribal Police series of crime fiction novels by Tony Hillerman.
Plot summary
When two passenger airplanes collide over the Grand Canyon in the 1950s killing all aboard, John Clarke's body is lost, as is the briefcase of diamonds he had locked to his wrist. Scorning Mr. Clarke's pregnant fiancee, the wealthy Clarke family disclaims the out-of-wedlock daughter, Joanna Craig. When Clarke's father dies without heir shortly after the crash, the family fortune is entrusted to the estate's attorney, Dan Plymale, to create a charitable foundation. Mr. Plymale then proceeds to live well as executor of the foundation's funds, while Joanna Craig and her mother live apart.
Decades later, Billy Tuve, a Hopi, is arrested on suspicion of burglary and murder based on his possession of a rare diamond. Tuve's cousin, Cowboy Dashee solicits help from his friend Navajo Tribal Police Sergeant Jim Chee to clear Tuve's name. Retired Navajo Tribal Police Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn learns that his old acquaintance "Shorty" McGinnis acquired a similar diamond many years ago from a man whose story matches Tuve's story. Joanna Craig pays the bail for Billy Tuve, asking him to lead her to the place where he received the diamond in a trade, many years ago. Billy is reluctant because the place is sacred to his religion. Before Joanna can pick Billy up at his own home, Fred Sherman arrives to take Billy away. Joanna trails them, and in a quick maneuver, takes Sherman's gun from him and shoots him in the chest. She and Billy proceed to the trail head on the south rim of the Grand Canyon. Billy takes her part way down, then disappears. Bradford Chandler, hired by Dan Plymale, learns Sherman will not meet him when a police officer answers Sherman's cell phone. Chandler goes on alone, reaching a place close to the sacred spot. Jim Chee, Cowboy Dashee, and Bernadette Manuelito arrived earlier, looking both for the absent Billy and the man who long ago traded with Billy, a man thought to be a religious hermit wanting Hopis to believe more in Massau’u,[2] to resolve the feelings left among them after the plane crash, with bodies raining down on them. Bernadette stays behind while Chee and Dashee each go a different way along the canyon bottom. Bernadette finds the slot (a cave but with an opening to sunlight way above) along the canyon wall where the man had lived, and his body, dead of natural causes. She sees a human arm bone, and his array of the remaining diamonds, whose flash in the sunlight was described to Prof. Louisa Bourbonnette in her oral history project to capture the origin stories of the tribes, a new story working its way into the old stories.
Chandler and Joanne meet in the canyon bottom, he with a loaded pistol, and follow Bernadette's tracks into the slot. Chandler stores the seventy odd diamonds in his hiking socks. A "male" storm, one of high intensity rains, rises.[3] Bernadette and Joanne take shelter on a ledge, while Chandler is carried out by the force of the instant river made by the rain. Chee finds the slot in time to see the corpse carried out by the torrent of water, followed by Chandler. He tries to save Chandler, but Chandler will not let go of the socks full of diamonds. The storm passes, and Chee runs to Bernadette. The three meet Dashee, whose ankle is injured, and return in the rescue helicopter. Joanna has what she needed most, the remains of her father's arm, chained to the container of diamonds. New DNA analysis methods show positively that he was her father, and she can claim her true name. She now has the clear basis to sue Plymale for her inheritance. Sherman was found in time by the local police, and survives. He will not admit that Joanna shot him; instead he tells police he did it himself by accident. The two corpses were found, but not the diamonds. The police will need to find the real culprit in the crime they charged against Billy Tuve, now proved innocent.
Characters
In addition to Chee and Leaphorn, returning series characters include:
- Bernadette Manuelito, formerly an officer with the Navajo Tribal Police, now fiancée of Jim Chee
- Cowboy Dashee, Deputy Sheriff of Navajo County, AZ
- John "Shorty" McGinnis, proprietor of the Short Mountain Trading Post
- Professor Louisa Bourbonnette, Leaphorn's friend and sometimes housemate
New characters introduced in this novel include:
- Billy Tuve, Hopi, member of the Bear Clan
- Bradford Chandler, aka Jim Belshaw, hired by Plymale to locate the diamonds and John Clarke's remains
- Dan Plymale, attorney for the Clarke family and executor of the Clark family fortune
- Fred Sherman, former policeman hired by Chandler to assist in the search for the missing diamonds
- Hal Simmons, Ms. Craig's attorney
- Joanna Craig, daughter of John Clarke
Title of the Novel
Skeleton man is an alternative name for the Hopi kachina, Massau'u. It is also what Chee said to describe the corpse of the shaman as it passed by him in the torrent of water from the slot that had been the shaman's home when alive. Joanna Craig sought the bones of her father, both to properly bury him and to show she was his daughter, using the DNA still present, nearly 50 years later.
Natural, cultural and historical references
Geographic, botanical, animal, historical, and cultural artifacts and events often play key roles in the Chee/Leaphorn series - either as direct plot elements, to explain character motivations or perspectives, or to illustrate cultural or religious beliefs and practices.[4][5][6][7] In Skeleton Man this includes:
- ANIMAL: Grand Canyon rattlesnake
- BOTANICAL: Claret cup cactus, cliff-rose, pinyon pine (Grand Canyon high-country plant life noted by Manuelito during search); Acacia (growth in canyon drainage screening path and impeding search)
- CULTURAL/RELIGIOUS: Hopi prayer sticks (sacred site is located in the search area); Havasupai (one of the peoples of the Grand Canyon);
- GEOGRAPHICAL: Little Colorado River at the Grand Canyon (search location); Gallup, New Mexico (jail where Tuve is held and where Craig takes a room in the historic El Rancho hotel); Tuba City, Arizona (the Short Mountain Trading Post is noted as being north of Tuba City); First Mesa, Arizona (Tuve's home)
- GEOLOGICAL: Slot canyon (plot element)
- HISTORICAL: 1956 Grand Canyon mid-air collision (historic basis for the death of John Clarke)
See also
References
- ^ New York Times best-seller list for December 19, 2004
- ^ Lee Anderson (9 December 2011). "Hopi Kachinas: Their Significance in Ceremony and Art". Retrieved 8 February 2014.
- ^ "Navajo Cultural History and Legends: Rain". November 2002.
- ^ Tony Hillerman: A Critical Companion by John M. Reilly
- ^ Talking Mysteries: A Conversation with Tony Hillerman By Tony Hillerman and Ernie Bulow
- ^ Seldom Disappointed: A Memoir by Tony Hillerman
- ^ Tony Hillerman's Navajoland by Laurance D. Lindford and Tony Hillerman