The coyote is waiting

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The Coyote Is Waiting is the tenth detective novel in a series by Tony Hillerman . Under the title Coyote Waits it was published in 1990 in English and in German in the same year by Goldmann Verlag .

context

The coyote is waiting is an ethnic crime thriller. The location of the action is the northeast of the US state Arizona and there the sparsely populated Navajo Nation Reservation . The detective novels of the series about the two investigators Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee , two police officers of the Navajo Tribal Police ( police of the Navajo Nation Reservation), also build on Native American culture.

people

The police

  • Officer ( Officer ) Jim Chee (warrior name: "Deep Thinker"), a member of the Navajo (also: Dinee, "people"). He is stationed in the small settlement of Shiprock . His intention was to become Hatathali, someone who masters ritual chants that are used when a person no longer lives in harmony with himself and his environment and therefore falls ill.
  • Captain Largo , Jim Chee's supervisor, at Shiprock Regional Police Department .
  • Lieutenant ( Lt. ) Joe Leaphorn , an elderly colleague, also a member of the Navajo. He is stationed in Window Rock . Some time ago his wife, Emma, ​​died during an operation. That makes him depressed sometimes . He is considering fulfilling a childhood dream and traveling to China to distract himself .
  • Delbert Nez is also stationed at Window Rock . His research into a graffiti “artist” who smeared black basalt rocks with white paint ended in death.
  • Jay Kennedey is the FBI office manager in Gallup, NM . Lieutenant Leaphorn is on good terms with him.
  • Theodore Rostik , also from the FBI, from the Farmington branch, is investigating on site.

The others

  • Janet Pete , a lawyer , has left her lover and former professor, as well as Washington, DC , and has returned. She and Chee try to get closer again. Janet Pete now works for the local Federal public defender . There her first client is Ashie Pinto.
  • Ashie Pinto is a shaman, an old man with an alcohol problem who is very well versed in Navajo lore and myths. He is a popular interview partner for anthropologists. Ashie Pinto appears to have shot and killed Delbert Nez while drunk but refuses to speak about it.
  • Louisa Bourebonette , anthropology professor whose latest book is based on interviews with Ashie Pinto.
  • Professor Tagert , a specialist in the history of the Wild West at the University of New Mexico, is also very interested in interviews with Ashie Pinto. He is embroiled in a heated argument with colleagues over the fate of Butch Cassidy , in which he hopes to use the knowledge of Ashie Pinto to gain the upper hand.
  • Jean Jacobs is Tagert's assistant because she wants to do a doctorate with him, but actually can't stand him. Your friend is
  • William Odell Redd , linguist and doctoral student, short of money, who translates the interviews from Navajo into English for Tagert, among others .
  • Huan Ji , a teacher at Shiprock High School with a dark past in the South Vietnamese secret service.
  • Taka Ji , son of Huan Ji and a student at the same school where his father teaches.

action

The criminal cases

Jim Chee and Delbert Nez have an appointment at a gas station. Shortly beforehand, Delbert Nez tells Chee over the radio that he is about to arrest a graffiti artist who has smeared basalt rocks with white paint, but does not need any help. When Albert Nez doesn't show up at the gas station, Chee looks for him. He finds him shot in his burning company car. While trying to pull him out of the vehicle, Chee suffers burns , but is still able to arrest the completely drunk Ashie Pinto in the immediate vicinity of the crime scene. However, due to a number of circumstantial evidence and inconsistencies, he strongly doubts his perpetrator. Chee is on sick leave because of the burns, but is still investigating because he makes serious allegations about the death of Delbert Nez.

Ashie Pinto's niece, who is also a distant relative of his late wife, Emma, ​​approaches Lieutenant Leaphorn because she too doubts that Ashie Pinto is the culprit. She is accompanied by the anthropology professor Louisa Bourebonette, who also has doubts about Ashie Pinto's culprit. He is one of her sources for her latest book. Lieutenant Leaphorn is so interested in the case and her too. He also begins to investigate.

After the two have investigated independently for a while, their efforts meet in the vicinity of Professor Tagert, who turns out to have disappeared, which nobody in his environment really regrets. Chee lies next to the truth with his conclusions until the end and embarrasses himself with it. But that doesn't bother Janet Pete at all.

Subplots

The love story between Jim Chee and Janet Pete suffers from this time including that Pete the public defender is Ashie Pinto, the Chee arrested. Although Chee doubts Pinto's culprit, neither of them really know when to act in the private sphere, when to act as a lawyer and as a police officer. In the end they get closer.

Joe Leaphorn is developing a relationship with Louisa Bourebonette. In any case, at the end of the novel, he asks her if she would like to take him on a trip to China.

expenditure

In book form

Other media

Remarks

  1. ↑ The 1st edition from 1990 was used for the article.
  2. ↑ In the first novels this form is given in the German translation as " Yaatalii ".
  3. ↑ This is an authority that is subordinate to the US Department of Justice and in criminal cases in which a federal court has jurisdiction, Public Defender provides.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Harper & Row , New York 1990, ISBN 0-06-016370-4
  2. ↑ 1st edition: Goldmann Verlag 1990. ISBN 3-442-30421-0 , not listed in the catalog of the German National Library .
  3. ↑ Information according to the catalog of the German National Library , unless otherwise stated.