The Golden Calf (Tony Hillerman)

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The Golden Calf is the 15th detective novel in a series by Tony Hillerman . It was published under the title The Wailing Wind in 2002 in English and in German in 2002 by Rowohlt Verlag .

background

The Golden Calf is a novel by Tony Hillerman from his series of ethnic thrillers, which initially focused on the two investigators Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee and in which the police officer Bernadette Manuelito increasingly plays a leading role. The three are equally important investigator characters in the novel.

The context is the Navajo Tribal Police ( police of the Navajo Nation Reservation ), the social atmosphere in the reservation and its surroundings, the Indian culture and its tensions against the “white” majority civilization. The reservation is located in the sparsely populated northeast of the US state of New Mexico .

people

Police and investigators

  • Officer ( Officer ) Jim Chee (warrior name: "The one who thinks ahead" or "Deep Thinker"), a member of the Navajo (also: Dinee, "people"). Chee is deeply rooted in Navajo culture. His intention was to become Hataalii , one who masters ritual chants that are used when a person no longer lives in harmony with himself and his environment and therefore falls ill. After the death of his mentor, Frank Sam Nakai , the eldest brother of Chee's mother, he stopped pursuing this goal. He works as a sergeant in the Shiprock office . His subordinate, with whom he finally falls in love in the course of the plot, is
  • Bernadette Manuelito ("Bernie"). Her secret “war name” is girl, who laughs . She is in love with Chee. But both have considerable difficulty in confessing this to the other.
  • Joe Leaphorn was Lieutenant ( Lt. ) of the Navajo Tribal Police and retired for some time. He is also a Navajo and used to be the boss of Chee. After the death of his wife a few years earlier and his retirement, he is lonely and devoted to investigations out of boredom. He lives in Windows Rock and is friends with the ethnologist Louisa Bourebonette .
  • Bart Hegarty was a sheriff in McKinley County , but was killed in a car accident years ago.

The others

  • Louisa Bourebonette is a Professor of Social Anthropology at Northern Arizona University . She collects Native American traditions and lives with Joe Leaphorn while doing research.
  • Thomas Doherty , nephew of Sheriff Bart Hegarty, is found dead in his car by Bernadette Manuelito in a lonely place. He was interested in the "lost" gold mine "The Golden Calv".
  • Wiley Denton , a wealthy oil entrepreneur, has also been interested in this gold mine for a long time. His wife
  • Linda has been missing, exactly since the day he was - as a court found -
  • Marvin McKay shot dead in excessive self-defense . McKay had researched the old mine "The Golden Calv" intensively.
  • Hostiin Peshlakai is a shaman who behaves in an unusual way.

action

context

For the area of ​​the reservation there are a number of stories about old gold mines that were discovered in the 19th century but then fell into oblivion. People keep trying to find them. For traditionally oriented Navajos, the destruction associated with modern gold mining is incompatible with respect for the traditional landscape.

The criminal case

Bernadette Manuelito finds the body of Thomas Doherty in his car. As it soon turns out, he researched the place where the legendary, lost gold mine "The Golden Calv" was. This reminds Joe Leaphorn of an old case that involved the same gold mine and whose supposed discoverer, Marvin McKay, was shot by oil millionaire Wiley Denton in an act of escalating self-defense. Less the exact circumstances of this act - which has already been judged and sentenced to prison for Wiley Denton - than the fact that since that day the wife of Wiley Denton, Linda, disappeared without a trace, leaves the case for Leaphorn seem interesting. At the same time, Wiley Denton wants to instruct him to do another research into his wife's whereabouts. A significant part of the novel deals with the elucidation of this "old case". The circumstances of Thomas Doherty's death are finally clarified.

Subplots

As the plot progresses, it becomes increasingly clear to Jim Chee that he is in love with Bernadette Manuelito - the reverse has long been the case.

Louisa Bourebonette now lives regularly with Joe. He includes her in his investigation, discusses it with her, as he used to do with his wife, Emma, ​​and Louisa Bourebonette also does her own investigation.

expenditure

Remarks

  1. ↑ In the first novels this is reproduced in the German translation with "Yaatalii" .
  2. ↑ German: “Das Goldene Kalb”, then the title of the German-language edition.
  3. ↑ Hostiin is an honorary title for respected older men, not a proper name. In the previous novels he is usually represented as "Hosteen".

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ HarperCollins , New York 2002. ISBN 0-06-019444-8
  2. ↑ ISBN 3-499-23355-X . This article is based on the German-language edition.
  3. ↑ Hillerman: The Golden Calf , p. 45.