“A Thief of Time,” by Tony Hillerman

FM's ratings:

          1. Premise 8

          2. Prose 8

          3. Plot 8

          4. Characters 8

          5. Overall 8

Comments (optional - but try to keep it under 3000 words!)

No weaknesses, no major strengths, just good, solid writing, in this, another first-time reading of an author, for me.   What Hillerman does very well – and I had been told this before reading him – is evoke the ambience, the atmosphere of the area in which he sets his mysteries; the region of the Southwest United States centering on the famed Four Corners, where Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico all come together at one point.  There is even a map at the beginning of the copy I read that shows almost all the cities and other place names mentioned in the story.  The dual protagonists represent two generations of Navajo Indian law enforcement agents, which lends itself to some nice distinctions in world-view.  The story also includes a gold mine of fascinating information about the anthropology of the area.  For instance, I had no idea there were over 10,000 sites attributed to the vanished civilization known as the Anasazi!  Many of them have been set aside for study until enough technological advances can take place to study them properly.  Pretty interesting!  The author’s low-key prose is not a put-off here; if anything, it heightens the tension as it builds toward the climax.  I have other books by Hillerman on my To-Be-Read shelf, and it won’t be long before I re-visit him.