The eagle's trail

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The Trail of the Eagle is the 13th detective novel in a series by Tony Hillerman . It was published in English under the title The First Eagle in 1998 and in German in 2000 by Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag .

background

The eagle's trail is a novel from a series of ethno-thrillers that focus on investigators Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee . The context is the Navajo Tribal Police ( police of the Navajo Nation Reservation ), the social atmosphere in the reservation, the Indian cultures represented there and in the vicinity, their tensions among themselves and with American-European civilization. The reservation is located in the sparsely populated northeast of the US state of New Mexico .

people

Investigator

  • Officer ( civil servant ) Jim Chee (warrior name: "He who thinks far ahead"), a member of the Navajo (also: Dinee, "people"). His intention was to become Hataalii, 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. Chee is deeply rooted in Navajo culture. He recently became Acting Chief of Police in Tuba City , a position he took on because he believed it would score points with his friend Janet Pete.
  • His investigation team consists of:
    • Ben Kinsman , who chases all women, causes trouble all the time, but not for very long.
    • Claire Dineyahze operates the radio and telephone switchboard and is Chee's secretary.
    • Bernadette Manuelito ("Bernie") is in love with her boss, which is rather embarrassing because he has not yet been able to clarify whether he is still engaged.
  • Joe Leaphorn was Lieutenant ( Lt. ) of the Navajo Tribal Police and retired for a year. He is also a Navajo and used to be the boss of Chee. His wife Emma died some time ago during an operation. He is lonely and increasingly bored, which is why he occasionally takes on private investigations. He lives in Windows Rock .
  • Cowboy Dashee is Hopi , the deputy sheriff of Coconino County and friends with Chee.

The friends

  • Janet Pete is an attorney who has worked in Washington, DC recently . She is Navajo about her father. She prefers to live on the east coast and in big cities. Now she has returned from Washington DC and works for the Federal public defender . You and Jim Chee wanted to get married.
  • Louisa Bourebonette is an anthropology professor, collects Indian myths and is friends with Joe Leaphorn.

The others

  • Anderson Nez falls victim to the plague and worked for
  • Dr. Woody , a doctor, immunologist, and plague researcher.
  • Catherine Anne Pollard is a biologist who works for a government health agency who is fighting the disease and has been molested by Ben Kinsman. Her aunt
  • Millicent Vanders , who lives in Santa Fe, is a billionaire and misses her.
  • Richard Krause is the boss of Catherine Anne Pollard. The two do not understand each other at all.
  • Victor Hammer is in love with Catherine Anne Pollard, but is not heard.
  • Robert Jano is Hopi, catches eagles and is placed over the corpse of Ben Kinsman with bloody hands.
  • JD Mickey is a public prosecutor with career intentions and currently acting deputy to the federal attorney.
  • Michael Perez is a biologist and a colleague of Louisa Bourebonette at the university.
  • Old Lady Notah is an important witness.
  • Hosteen Sam Frank Nakai is Jim Chee's maternal uncle. He is dying with lung cancer . his wife is
  • Blue lady .

action

Contexts

Time and again, people in the reservation get sick with the plague, which is transmitted from rodents by fleas to people who get sick and also die. The health authorities are trying to destroy infected rodent populations, researchers are trying to determine the pathogens in the infected populations, fear the occurrence of particularly virulent pathogen strains and are trying to use them to develop defense mechanisms.

For a specific religious ceremony, the Hopi need a live eagle. Since eagles are strictly protected, it is illegal to catch them.

The criminal case

At the scene of the crime, Jim Chee meets the blood-smeared Robert Jano , who is bending over the "fresh" corpse of the police officer Ben Kinsman who has just been slain . Robert Jano caught an eagle that did not show any traces of blood for a Hopi religious ceremony. The situation seems clear. JD Mickey , currently Acting Assistant Attorney General, sees the case as an opportunity to get the necessary boost to his political career by bringing the charges to murder and demanding the death penalty for Robert Jano . Robert Jano is defended by Janet Pete . At the same time as the murder of Ben Kinsman , the biologist Catherine Anne Pollard disappears . Her troubled aunt, Millicent Vanders , hires Joe Leaphorn to look for her. Soon both storylines meet and Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn investigate the same facts from different angles.

Subplots

The love story between Jim Chee and Janet Pete comes to an end. Until the end, Jim Chee ponders what relationship he is in with Janet Pete . When Janet Pete used an illegal tape recording made by Jim Chee of a telephone conversation with an FBI agent as leverage against the FBI, exposing him as a source to secure evidence in favor of her client, Jim Chee realized that their relationship was coming to an end is.

Even Joe Leaphorn is the status of his relationship with Louisa Bourebonette unclear. When she tells him that she was very unhappy in a previous marriage and therefore does not want to marry again, the point is clarified. They are and will remain good friends and have a lot of fun investigating together.

expenditure

Remarks

  1. ↑ So in: Ghost dancers . Goldmann Verlag, Munich 1995, ISBN 978-3-442-43036-9 , p. 250. Whenever Chee's warrior name was mentioned in the previous novels in the series, it was always “Deep Thinker”.
  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.
  4. ↑ "Hosteen" is not a name, but a respectful form of address for an older man.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ HarperCollins , New York 1998, ISBN 0-06-017581-8
  2. ^ Rowohlt Verlag 2000, ISBN 978-3-499-43364-8 . The German version was used as the basis for the article here.