The skeleton man

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Graphic reconstruction of the aircraft collision over the Grand Canyon on June 30, 1956
Crash sites in the Grand Canyon

The Skeleton Man is the 17th detective novel in a series by Tony Hillerman . Under the title Skeleton Man , he was released in 2004 in English , in German 2006 Rowohlt Verlag .

background

The Skeleton Man is a novel by Tony Hillerman from his series about investigators Jim Chee and Bernadette Manuelito . The series comprises a number of detective novels, which initially lived mainly from the ethnological context, the social ambience in the Navajo Nation Reservation and its surroundings and the tension between Indian culture and “white” majority civilization. The author has loosened these ties more and more over the course of the series , even abandoning them in the previous novel, Dark Channels . With The Skeleton Man he returns to this context. What he is giving up here, however, is integrating his main actors into the Navajo Tribal Police , the reservation police . The main actors investigate privately.

On June 30, 1956, the plane collision occurred over the Grand Canyon , a crash between two passenger planes in which 128 people died. The author chose this accident as a distant, historical impetus for an action unfolding in the present.

people

Police and investigators

  • Cowboy Dashee is Hopi and a longtime friend of Jim Chee. He now works for the Bureau of Land Management and was previously the deputy sheriff of Coconino County . He is a cousin of Billy Tuve.
  • Sergeant Jim Chee is a member of the Navajo (also: Dinee, "people"). Chee is deeply rooted in Navajo culture. He works as a sergeant in Shiprock for the Navajo Tribal Police . He and his former colleague Bernadette Manuelito want to get married.
  • Bernadette Manuelito ("Bernie") is also a Navajo member. She had been transferred to the border police at the Mexican border, but is now on leave there and has returned to the reservation to marry Jim Chee.
  • Joe Leaphorn was a lieutenant in the Navajo Tribal Police and has been 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.

The others

  • Billy Tuve , cousin of Cowboy Dashee , who has been mentally retarded since an accident in his childhood, is suspected of having robbed a pawn shop . The occasion is a valuable diamond that he is trying to pawn for a much too small amount and that he wants to have received from an old Indian in exchange for a folding spade .
  • East Coast jeweler John Clarke was aboard one of the planes that crashed over the Grand Canyon in 1956 with a suitcase full of diamonds chained to his wrist . From a witness it is known that Clarke's severed arm and suitcase were in the river, but then disappeared. It gradually becomes clear that an ancient Indian who lived as a hermit in the Grand Canyon had taken the arm and the diamonds.
  • Joanna Craig knows from her mother that she is the daughter of John Clarke . However, he died before her parents could marry. Only a genetic test could prove the paternity of John Clarke . There is a huge legacy attached to it that is currently in a foundation managed by attorney Dan Plymal . When Billy Tuve shows up with the diamond, she draws hope that she might be able to rescue her father's arm for a genetic test.
  • Lawyer Dan Plymal makes a living from the foundation he manages, so he puts an agent on John Clarke's arm to make him disappear if he's found.
  • Bradford Chandler ( aka : Jim Belshaw ), this agent.
  • Fred Sherman , a retired police officer but easy on the law, is hired by Bradford Chandler to assist him.
  • Louisa Bourebonette is a Professor of Social Anthropology at Northern Arizona University. She collects Native American lore and can give Joe Leaphorn some important information over the phone.

action

Three groups are trying to find the diamonds that were lost in 1956, or John Clarke's arm :

  • Cowboy Dashee , his friend Jim Chee and his fiancée, Bernadette Manuelito , to rid Billy Tuve of suspicions of the robbery.
  • Joanna Craig to prove their ancestry and to take the inheritance.
  • Dan Plymal through Bradford Chandler to prevent that from happening.

The action is heading towards a major showdown between the participants in the Grand Canyon.

Worth knowing

In the German-language edition, the upper edge of the book pages is designed as a flip book , in which the silhouettes of two aircraft, a Douglas DC-7 and a Lockheed Super Constellation , the two types of aircraft that were involved in the accident over the Grand Canyon in 1956, converge race.

expenditure

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ HarperCollins , New York 2004, ISBN 0-06-056344-3 .
  2. ↑ ISBN 3-499-24118-8 . This article is based on the German-language edition.