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....

Old Joseph Joe sees it all. Two strangers spill blood at the Shiprock Wash-O-Mat. One dies. The other drives off into the dry lands of the Big Reservation, but not before he shows the old Navajo a photo of the man he seeks. This is all Tribal Policeman Jim Chee needs to set him off on an odyssey that moves from a trapped ghost in an Indian hogan to the seedy underbelly of L.A. to an ancient healing ceremony where death is the cure, and into the dark...

Homicide is always an abomination, but there is something exceptionally disturbing about the victim discovered in a high lonely place, a corpse with a mouth full of sand, abandoned at a crime scene seemingly devoid of tracks or useful clues. Though it goes against his better judgment, Navajo Tribal Police Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn cannot help but suspect a hint of the supernatural. There is palpable evil in the air, and Leaphorn's pursuit of a Wolf-Witch...

As readers of Tony Hillerman's detective novels know, he is a skilled interpreter of southwestern Indian cultures. In this book, first published in 1972, he recounts a Zuni myth first recorded a century ago by the anthropologist Frank Hamilton Cushing. Hillerman's version of the story, written to be read by children ten years old and up, will have equal appeal for adults with an interest in Native American culture.

"In our society," Hillerman

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The author's journey through the Southwest, with over two hundred photographs taken by his brother.

The blessing way -- Homicide is always an abomination, but there is something exceptionally disturbing about the victim discovered in a high lonely place -- a corpse with a mouth full of sand, abandoned at a crime scene seemingly devoid of tracks or useful clues. Though it goes against his better judgment, Navajo Tribal Police Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn cannot help but suspect the hand of a supernatural killer. There is palpable evil in the air, and...

Separate police investigations become closely related when it becomes clear that Henry Highhawk is wanted by others besides the police and is involved in more than grave robbing.

A noted anthropologist arrives at an Anasazi Indian ruin to dig for clay pots and is terrified by what looms out of the darkness. Weeks later she is reported missing. Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn unearths a bizarre and mystifying series of murders.

The victim, well dressed but stripped of identification, is found at the edge of the vast Jicarilla Apache natural gas field just inside the jurisdiction of the Navajo Tribal Police, facing Sergeant Jim Chee with a complex puzzle.