Hillerman, Anne Shadow of the Solstice
The summer solstice is the day in June that contains the most daylight of the year. Even with that length, Anne Hillerman’s Shadow of the Solstice just barely manages to encompass the slightly over-complicated plot. It begins with the potential arrival of a high government official to Shiprock, a promotion of Lieutenant Jim Chee to Chief of Station when a heart attack fells the current head. Chee then needs to take up the slack and work with the FBI on the identification of a body just inside the fence at a no-go nuclear waste site. Before you catch up on this apparent murder, a strange Jim Jones-style cult that preaches love through abusive violence is deemed dangerous enough to need on-site monitoring by Chee’s wife, Bernadette Manuelito. Shortly after that, Bernie’s not always reliable younger sister, Darleen, who is now employed as a home health aide, gets embroiled in the disappearance of an elderly client and her grandson. They have been whisked away to Phoenix in a scam that is sold as a program to treat drug and alcohol abuse among the native population. It bills the government for providing programs that do not exist and sends its addicted clients off onto the city streets, often worse off than they were before.
What saves the book from being buried in its multiple plot
lines is that the major characters, Chee, Bernie, Mama, and Darleen are already
well known to readers of the Hillerman father and daughter franchise. They need
little addition to character development or to the overlay of Navajo customs,
history, and land. The climax does neatly pull all the threads together. It all
feels like you are slipping your feet into a pair of well-worn hiking boots. First-time
readers might find themselves a bit more at sea.
4 out of 5
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