Hoodoos Redux: What I'm Reading

With my last post on hoodoos at Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks and the distinctive landforms to be found there, it is mere coincidence that I am reading a book right now called "Hoodoo" by Susan Cummins Miller. It is a murder mystery set in the Chiricahua Mountains of southeastern Arizona. The hook? The protagonist is Frankie MacFarlane, a community college geology professor who gets involved in a series of murders while dragging a group of students around on a field trip. Given my personal bio, I'm not really sure why I find such a plot interesting....

I've enjoyed Miller's stories (this is the fourth in a series) for a number of reasons. For one, it's nice to have an author that gets the setting right. I loved Tony Hillerman's mysteries, and his understanding of Native American culture was extensive, but I would get tripped up when all of a sudden his detective was stumbling around in limestone caverns at Lake Powell, which is not likely. I spend a fair amount of time in some of the places Miller writes about: Riverside, the Mojave Desert, eastern Nevada, and others. She captures the sense of these places well. And, much of the plotting is plausible. I love reading Thomas Perry novels but no real human being could survive the assaults his protagonists suffer without going absolutely nuts from PTSD. Or being dead about 30 pages into the story. Miller's mysteries are more character-driven, and less action-driven. Finally, being not a literary reviewer, I will simply say I enjoyed having enough clues to be able to have an inkling, if nothing more, of who the murderer or murderers were.

It's nice that we geologists get to have a few literary heroes (check out the Sarah Andrews series of mysteries with the Em Hansen character for another example). For some other mysteries with a great sense of place, be sure to check out the Nevada Barr and Tony Hillerman novels (my criticisms above are trivial, really). One more series you may have missed are the Jessica Speart novels with a Fish and Wildlife Service agent as the protagonist.

Did I forget anyone?

Today's photo is some of the most famous hoodoos of all, those at Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah.

Remembering Tony Hillerman

Sometimes news gets past me. Sometimes I wish it didn't. I was reviewing some of those end-of-the-year lists of who passed on during the year and found to my dismay that author Tony Hillerman died in late October at the age of 83. Those of you who follow my blog know that I love the Colorado Plateau country, and Mr. Hillerman wrote wonderful novels set in the region. His murder mysteries chronicling the adventures of Navajo policemen Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee fascinated me for years. He evoked the land and the native American people in a way that few Anglos could. I always looked forward to each new novel in the series.

One of my favorites was A Thief of Time, which was set in the vicinity of Bluff, Utah and on the San Juan River near Mexican Hat. Having rafted that part of the river, I knew the landscape well. It dealt with the issue of illegal plundering of archaeological sites in the southwest, a problem that continues more or less unabated today. During my trip down the river, I was admiring one of the complex cliff dwellings, wondering how it survived through the years. Then I was told that the walls had been repaired several times after someone knocked them down with a bulldozer looking for pottery.

Hillerman's novels were chronological, and we aged with the principle characters. From book to book we were left to wonder what would happen next to Jim, Joe, Janice Pete, Bernie Manuelito and the other complex characters he created over the years. He wrote 18 of the Chee/Leaphorn novels starting with The Blessing Way in 1970. His last was The Shape Shifter in 2006. Any of them are worth your time, whether you enjoy the settings, or the often complicated plots.

Thank you for the adventures...

The picture shows a part of the Chuska Mountains near the heart of the Navajo Reservation on the Arizona/New Mexico border.