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Tony Hillerman Skeliton " SARAH CAUDWELL • STATE OF THE SHORT STORY • KIRK RUSSELL " Your Guide to the Best in Mystery, Crime & Suspense Features Hillerman Country 14 Tony Hillennan talks abont his favorite novel, writers who influenced him and the real-life models for his Navajo detectives Joe Leaphom and Jim Chee. Ify Tom Nolan Deborah Crombie: The Yellow Rose of Mystery 18 A Texan with a specialty in richly detailed, atmospheric British police novels. Ify MK. Graff The Romance of the Dark 20 Nair classics light up the screen Tony Hillerman, page 14. at two West Coast film festivals. Ify Nate Nichols A Writer to Remember: Anthony Price 26 Subtly trumpeting the virtue ofloyalty and the uses of scholarship, Price's espionage novels capture something of Faulkner's "truths of the heart." Ify H.R.F. Keating 10 Detective Shows I'd Like to See on TV 28 A well-known TV critic offers ideas for ten shows that would delight audiences-and make the networks money. Ify Ron Miller For the SCoobyGang on your list, page 36. Wild Man: A Chat with Kirk Russell 32 Russell's John Marquez and his California Fish and Game officers pound a unique beat. Ify Adrian Muller 2004 Gift Guide for Young Sleuths 36 A dazzling array of toys, games, and puzzles for the younger mystery fan. Ify Roberta Rogow The 2004 Mystery Scene Holiday Gift Guide 42 Golden Spider earrings, a librarian action figure, Sherlockian ornaments, TV classics on DVD, tasteful offerings from the L.A. Coroner's Office ... whatever your gift-giving challenges, we've got you covered. Ify Kevin Burton Smith eiKate Stine The devious legal mind of sarah Caudwell. MYSTERY SCENE 1 by Hillerman Country Tom Nolan ~! I ""--'-'~~_-"--'--~_--"--'=cd"=--~ ~ New York Time uestsetling Author ike the weather in New Mexicowhere he lives and L writes, Tony Hillerman can surprise you. TONY It's no shock of course to learn that this prolific HILLERMAN author has a new book out: Skeleton Man, the17th SKELITON MAN entry in his bestselling series featuring Navajo Tribal Police lieutenant Joe Leaphorn and sergeant Jim Chee. The multi-award-winning Hillerman has been chronicling the exploits of these popular characters since 1970's The Blessing Way. 14 MYSTERYSCENE But it might startle some to hear which of his 19 novels, two children's books, and Navajo tribal cops Lt, Joe Leaphorn (Wes Studi, left) and Jim 11volumes of nonfiction the author himself Chee (Adam Beach) star in the PBS's Mvstery! dramatiza- likes the most. tions of Hillerman's novels. So far the PBS series has offered "Finding Moon," says Hillerman, naming Sklnwalkers (2002), Coyote Walts (2003) and A Thief of one of only two non-series adult novels he's Time (2004). All three productions are available on DVD and published in 35 years. 'There's my best book." VHS at <http://www.shoppbs.org!>. Though reviewers and readers admired that 1995work, it seems an eccentric choice- until one hears of its author's long and com- maximum-security prison was down in the plicated relationship with it, beginning in Solomon Islands ... So I flew down there- the 1950s. way the hell down near Guadalcanal-and "It's really what caused me to start try- it was quite a trip. It was quite an experi- ing to write novels in the first place," says ence, and it made the book a hell of a lot bet- Hillennan, who for seven years was a crime ter." Some 50 years in the making, Find- reporter, wire-service bureau manager, and ing Moon was at last completed in 1994. newspaper editor in Texas, Oklahoma (his "It was important to me," Hillerman says, birthplace), and New Mexico. "I was work- "and I enjoyed the heck out of writing it, ing for United Press, and all hell was hap- and-I just thought it came out well." peningin the Belgian Congo; thafswayback, There's another reason Finding Moon the Belgian Congo doesn't exist of course may be so close to its author's heart. With anymore. Stanleyville was in flames, and its backdrop of violent turmoil, the book is there were about three different rebel annies among other things a combat story-and as and the oil company mercenaries fighting such, it connects to Tony Hillerman's ear- it out; it was total chaos. And I thought, 'Man liest experience with books, as a youngster The character of oh man ... that would be really a hell of a on an Oklahoma farm. setting for a book'-for somebody who thinks Asked what he read when he was a kid, Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn. he's good at writing narrative, but doesn't Hillerman says: "Oh, I was a war lover. I know ifhe can develop characters or plot or read The Conquest ofI'eru, I read Civil War was based on a young sheriff anything, see." books. I read Beau Geste, Beau Sabreur- Hillerman began such a hook more than those P.C. Wren books about the Foreign in a Texas town where once, he says, but: "I didn't know how to do Legion. I read about the Boer War. And it. And it just sat there. Years passed. Bel- then-when I'd save money from picking Hillerman had been gian Congo ceasesto exist ... Then, I'm watch- blackberries and we'd go to Shawnee, I would a police reporter. ing (on TV) the evacuation of the American buy FlyingAces, and Bill Barnes' Air Trails, embassy, as the Vietnam Warwas ending- and I'd read about the air combat in World ~ great big good-looking and I'm thinking, 'Hell, there's the Belgian War One." Hillerman chuckles. "I was afraid Congo, in a different way. I'm going to go World War Two would get over before I guy, he was really smart, back to that book. m could get into it." By then, Tony Hillerman was a profes- It didn't. Hillerman served in the Army and he was humane sor of journalism and a department chair- Infantry, earning a Silver Star, a Bronze Star, man at the University of New Mexico. His and a Purple Heart. He married in 1948, fa- -kind of an ideal cop. second assault on his old plot was thwarted thered six children, and began a career in byan inahilityto get a visa for travel to Viet- journalism. He was 45 years old before his I really liked the guy." nam or Cambodia The novel lay fallow for first novel, The Blessing Way, was published. Thefigure of Sergeant several more years-until it occurred to He doesn't regret having waited all that Hillerman he could approach his story and time to write fiction, he says: "Ah,no. I dearly Jim Chee had a its research via the Philippines. lovedbeing a reporter, being an editor; I loved "My plan," he remembers, "was to get in- the newspaper business ... And then I really different sort of genesis. side that famous prison in Manila; I was go- enjoyed teaching; and when I was teaching, ingto have a couple of the characters in there, I was still writing magazine stuff, so-no, I '1 had just been a professor you see. But I got to Manila just when the don't wish I'd started earlier ... First place, a Filipinos had gotten tired of Marcos. The lot of the stuff in my books is based on what when I needed Chee, whole city was on a general strike, and the I saw as a police reporter: the kind of people president was fleeing with his wife ... And you meet, and what you learn, and the scenes and I sort of homogenized they weren't letting strangers like me into you've seen ... You get a head full of recollec- a bunch of students that that prison." tions, and some of them fit so well in what Undaunted (despite discovering the pass- you're writing-even though you haven't I had been teaching." port he'd brought was expired), Hillerman planned them, exactly, but there they are." improvised. "Somebody told me that the real The character of lieutenant Joe Leaphorn, MYSTERY SCENE 15 the novelist says, was based on a young sher- Indian Country, Hillennan says, he consults iff in a Texas town where Hillerman had no outlines when writing a book: "Ijust hope been a police reporter. "A great big good- for the best. And then I go back and fix it, looking guy, and be was really smart, and "Youlilike see, when I get something wrong. Or, most he was humane-kind of an ideal cop. And of it I fix: I really liked the guy. Years later, when I This practical approach towards the cre- needed a Navajo cop in The Blessing Way, to think the muse ative act was also implanted in Hillerman I gave him a lot of the characteristics of this early on, he says. "When I first decided Texas sheriff: that I was really going to get serious about The figure of Sergeant Jim Chee (intro- is with you, trying to write a novel, I visited the Uni- duced in 1980's People a/Darkness) had a versity of Georgia and got the reference li- different sort of genesis. "I had just been a , . brarian to let me go through the unedited professor when I needed Chee, and I sort of you re a genius, manuscripts of John Steinbeck; and boy, did homogenized a bunch of students that I had I leam a lot from that I mean, he's a hen of been teaching; gave him parts of their per- a writer-and the amount of crossing out he sonalities, you know." and it'sjust did! For example, in The Wayward Bus: Chee and the older Leaphorn are sepa- he had this long, long description written of rated by a generation.
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