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Navajo mystery familiar yet underdeveloped
Reviewed by Aissatou Sidime

THE SHAPE SHIFTER

by Tony Hillerman

(HarperCollins, 288 pages, $26.95)

I was introduced to Tony Hillerman’s mysteries while on a crazed quest in
the late 1990s for mysteries that featured people of color and female
protagonists.

It was about the time that Walter Mosley’s Easy Rawlins books took off. I
also read Valerie Wilson Wesley, Eleanor Taylor Bland and Chester Himes.

I keep coming back to Hillerman because of his ability — despite being an
Anglo — to capture key concepts and elucidate the mores of the Four Corners
American Indians, mainly the Navajo.

He has earned the Navajo Tribe’s Special Friend Award and has received the
Mystery Writers of America Edgar and Grand Master awards.

In his acclaimed Joe Leaphorn series, featured on PBS, Hillerman uses
Navajo creation tales, historical events and cultural practices and attire
as filters through which his characters, mainly Navajo law enforcement
officers, process the crimes.

It’s often a careful dance they walk that blends Western investigative
techniques and an anti-paranormal frame of reference with their indigenous
upbringings and the Navajo focus on spirit worlds and gods.

In the 20th novel in the series, Leaphorn is a retired tribal policeman who
gets drawn back into an old case. The story felt familiar for more than
that reason: It reminded me of his 1988 book, “Skinwalkers.” Both books are
about people who change shape, appearance, demeanor and identity to mislead
others.

In “The Shape Shifter,” Leaphorn even says that shape shifters are often
called skinwalkers. Sadly, it was an impression that stayed with me
throughout the book.

The novel starts like a tale told around a campfire, with Leaphorn setting
up to recount to Jim Chee, another stalwart in the series, the mess he has
stumbled into. Then it flashes back 11 days, and the story unfolds.

As a result, “The Shape Shifter” has a rather distant feel in comparison to
the other mysteries in the series.

Moreover, while we readers know the full truth of the tale, Leaphorn omits
some key facts in the final chapter when he talks directly with Chee. It
seems an odd concession since he went to Chee expressly to confess.

Although Hillerman says he never outlines the stories before starting to
write, in this case, I wish he had taken more time to develop the mystery
of the tale.

Sisime wrote this for the San Antonio Express-News.