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A Thief of Time

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Overview

This eBook version of A Thief of Time is loaded with extras not available in the print edition, including Tony Hillerman's running commentary on his work and his series heroes Leaphorn and Chee, and a special profile of the Navajo nation.

A noted anthropologist vanishes at a moonlit Indian ruin where "thieves of time" ravage sacred ground for profit.

When two corpses appear amid stolen goods and bones at an ancient burial site, Navajo Tribal Policemen Lt. Joe Leaphorn and Officer Jim Chee must plunge into the past to unearth the astonishing truth behind a mystifying series of horrific murders.

Editorial Reviews

Here, kicking off a new mass market paperback line, tribal police officers Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee head a big and skillfully realized cast involved in the disappearance of an anthropologist. ``Hillerman's new novel seamlessly unites drama, pathos and naturally humorous incidents in the continuing story of Navajo life set in the American Southwest,'' lauded PW. $250,000 ad/promo. (Jan.) -- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY.

Author Information

Bio of Tony Hillerman

As a journalist, Hillerman has worked for newspapers in Oklahoma and for UPI. He has been a political reporter in Santa Fe, a professor of journalism and chair of the journalism department at the University of New Mexico, and assistant to the president of that university. The American Southwest and its landscape and peoples, particularly the Navajo, are the focus for many of Hillerman's mysteries. He hopes that people learn more about Native Americans and their cultures by reading his books, and he draws upon their many traditions and stories for his novels. Thus, as people read Hillerman's work, they are learning about another culture and history as well as enjoying a finely crafted mystery. His two detectives---Officer Jim Chee and Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn---first came together in Skinwalkers (1987). Tony Hillerman's many honors include the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar & Grand Master awards, the Silver Spur Award for best novel set in the West, & the Navajo tribe's Special Friend Award. His best-selling novels include "The First Eagle", "The Fallen Man", & "Finding Moon".

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Additional Info

Imprint

HarperCollins

Filesize

716.74 KB

Number of Pages

352

eBook ISBN

9780061186011

Awards

  • Edgar Awards (Edgar Allan Poe Awards)
  • Macavity Award

Excerpt from: A Thief of Time by Tony Hillerman

HE MOON HAD RISEN just above the cliff behind her. Out on the packed sand of the wash bottom the shadow of the walker made a strange elongated shape. Sometimes it suggested a heron, sometimes one of those stick-figure forms of an Anasazi pictograph. An animated pictograph, its arms moving rhythmically as the moon shadow drifted across the sand. Sometimes, when the goat trail bent and put the walker's profile against the moon, the shadow became Kokopelli himself. The backpack formed the spirit's grotesque hump, the walking stick Kokopelli's crooked flute. Seen from above, the shadow would have made a Navajo believe that the great yei northern clans called Watersprinkler had taken visible form. If an Anasazi had risen from his thousand-year grave in the trash heap under the cliff ruins here, he would have seen the Humpbacked Flute Player, the rowdy god of fertility of his lost people. But the shadow was only the shape of Dr. Eleanor Friedman-Bernal blocking out the light of an October moon.

Dr. Friedman-Bernal rested now, sitting on a convenient rock, removing her backpack, rubbing her shoulders, letting the cold, high desert air evaporate the sweat that had soaked her shirt, reconsidering a long day.

No one could have seen her. Of course, they had seen her driving away from Chaco. The children were up in the gray dawn to catch their school bus. And the children would chat about it to their parents. In that tiny, isolated Park Service society of a dozen adults and two children, everyone knew everything about everybody. There was absolutely no possibility of privacy. But she had done everything right. She had made the rounds of the permanent housing and checked with everyone on the digging team. She was driving into Farmington, she'd said. She'd collected the outgoing mail to be dropped off at the Blanco Trading Post. She had jotted down the list of supplies people needed. She'd told Maxie she had the Chaco fever -- needed to get away, see a movie, have a restaurant dinner, smell exhaust fumes, hear a different set of voices, make phone calls back to civilization on a telephone that would actually work. She would spend a night where she could hear the sounds of civilization, something besides the endless Chaco silence. Maxie was sympathetic. If Maxie suspected anything, she suspected Dr. Eleanor Friedman-Bernal was meeting Lehman. That would have been fine with Eleanor Friedman-Bernal.