The talking mask

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The Talking Mask is the ninth detective novel in a series by Tony Hillerman . Entitled Talking God he published in 1989 in English , in German for the first time in 1990 in Thienemann publishing house .

Southwest Chief
National Museum of Natural History , Washington, DC

people

  • Lieutenant ( Lt. ) Joe Leaphorn , an elderly colleague, also a member of the Navajo. He is stationed in Window Rock . His wife, Emma, ​​recently died from an operation. This makes him look for distraction and sometimes get depressed .
  • 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 . He is also 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.
  • Janet Pete, lawyer . You and Jim Chee have grown closer. Janet Pete still feels a bond with her former professor, John McDermott.
  • Mary Landon, Jim Chee's former girlfriend, has decided to stay in Wisconsin , but Jim Chee does not want to leave his Navajo culture. She therefore declares the relationship over.
  • Jay Kennedey, FBI office manager in Gallup, NM
  • Cowboy Dashee, deputy and friend of Jim Chee.
  • Henry Highhawk, curator at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC , had an Native American grandmother from the Bitter Water clan, would like to be recognized as a Navajo, and is fighting for Indian rights with unusual means.
  • Dr. Carolyn Hartmann, museum curator and head of Highhawk.
  • Leroy Fleck works as a private detective and contract killer for the Chilean secret service.
  • Delmar Fleck, his brother.
  • Mrs. Fleck, mother of the two.
  • Eddie Elkins, contact from Leroy Fleck from prison. He gets him jobs.
  • "The Client" is also called "Stone", an employee of the Chilean secret service in the Embassy of Chile in Washington, DC
  • Ramón Huerta Cardona, Chilean general and intelligence chief.
  • Elogio Santillanes y Jiminez, leading Chilean left-wing politician who is in opposition to the Pinochet regime and lives in exile in the USA .
  • Rudolfo Gomez (alias: Santero and "Bad Hands"), also a member of the left opposition against the Pinochet regime and in exile in the USA.
  • Bernard St. Germain, a railroad worker.
  • Mr. Dockerey, still a railroad worker, works for Amtrak .
  • Agnes Tsosie of the Bitter Water Clan is fatally ill with liver cancer. A yeibichai , a healing ceremony, is held for them.

action

The criminal cases

Janet Pete works for the Washington, DC law firm that her former professor, John McDermott, also works for. She suspects that the law firm is covering unfair real estate deals in the reservation area.

Shortly before his vacation, Jim Chee has to execute an arrest warrant against Henry Highhawk. As a political demonstration he unearthed white skeletons in a cemetery, because after all white people do the same with Indian skeletons. He escaped from the following legal proceedings. While on vacation, Jim Chee flies to Washington, DC to meet Janet Pete.

On the railway line used by Chicago to Los Angeles leads, in a section by the Santa Fe Railway operates one dead is east of Gallup, NM, found off the track. Joe Leaphorn is called in to look for clues. He cannot get rid of the problem that a dead person cannot be identified here. It turns out that the dead was "dumped" from the Southwest Chief , the Amtrak train that runs between Chicago and Los Angeles. The trail continues to Washington, DC

Leroy Fleck works in Washington, DC, as a private detective and contract killer - as he discovers in the course of the plot - for the Chilean secret service, which tries to kill leading opposition members. Incidentally, Leroy Fleck has its own vendetta against the world and produces corpses in series. But the Chilean opposition is not squeamish either and is trying to kill representatives of the Chilean government.

The action is concentrated and culminates in the National Museum of Natural History .

Subplots

The love story between Jim Chee and Mary Landon, which begins in the novel The Wind of Evil , is ended by a letter from Mary Landon. At the end of the novel, she tries to iron it out again. Presumably the storyline is supposed to be saved for further episodes.

The love story between Jim Chee and Janet Pete is not getting anywhere: Janet Pete still has a bond with her former professor, John McDermott, and works in the same law firm as him, although she can't shake the feeling that he is being used .

context

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 ), are based on Indian culture. In The Speaking Mask, however, this is different from the previous novels : There the crime was carried predominantly from the “white” culture into the Indian world. The talking mask, however, takes place mainly outside the Indian world. The first dead person is found outside the reservation. Then the plot shifts entirely to Washington, DC and there to a large extent in the National Museum of Natural History .

The central crimes arise from the struggle between the Pinochet regime and the left opposition acting against the regime. Talking mask is a political thriller , no ethnic crime. In this case, the Indian culture is woven into the action and illuminated through the museum-historical perspective - through the person of the museum curator Henry Highhawk and the exhibition on Indian culture that he organizes.

expenditure

In book form

Other media

Remarks

  1. ↑ The 2001 edition was used for the article.
  2. ↑ In the first novels this term is reproduced in the German translation as " Yaatalii ".
  3. ↑ Cf. Tony Hillerman - Detective novels in Diné .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Harper & Row , New York 1989, ISBN 0-06-016118-3
  2. ↑ Compare the specimen copy in the catalog of the German National Library