Death on the holy mountain

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Death on the Holy Mountain is the twelfth detective novel in a series by Tony Hillerman . Under the title The Fallen One , he was released in 1996 in English , in German 1998 Rowohlt paperback publishing house .

context

The "Holy Mountain", Shiprock

Death on the Holy Mountain is an ethno-thriller. The detective novels of the series about the two investigators Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee , a police officer of the Navajo Tribal Police ( police of the Navajo Nation Reservation ), also build on their Indian culture. The place of the plot of Death on Holy Mountain is the northeast of the US state New Mexico , there the sparsely populated Navajo Nation Reservation. The "holy mountain" of the title is the Shiprock .

people

Investigator

  • Officer ( civil servant ) Jim Chee (warrior name: "He who thinks far ahead"), a member of the Navajo (also: Dinee, "people"). He intends 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. Chee is stationed for three weeks at the headquarters of the Navajo Tribal Police in the town of Shiprock where he is managing ( "acting officer") as head of the Criminal Investigation officiating ( "Criminal Investigation Squad").
  • His investigation team consists of:
    • Bernadette Manuelito ("Bernie"),
    • Officer Begayaya ,
    • Deejay Hondo and
    • Edison Bai .
  • Captain ( captain ) Largo , head of the Navajo Tribal Police in the Police Department Shiprock is the superior of Jim Chee. Captain Largo is also a part-time cattle breeder and is therefore particularly sensitive to cattle theft.
  • Joe Leaphorn was Lieutenant ( Lt. ) of the Navajo Tribal Police , is now retired for a year and also a member of the Navajo. His wife Emma died some time ago during an operation. He is lonely and increasingly bored.

The friends

  • Janet Pete , a lawyer with the Federal public defender , and Jim Chee are about to get married.
  • The aforementioned Bernadette Manuelito ("Bernie") impresses Jim Chee and the two get closer.

The others

  • Three extreme mountaineers:
    • Bill Buchanan ,
    • John Whiteside and
    • Jim Stopp find another dead extreme mountaineer who is already skeletonized while climbing on Shiprock .
  • Rich heir to a ranch, Harold Breedlove (" Hal ") disappeared 11 years ago. In the course of the investigation it turns out that he is the dead person found.
  • Elisa Breedlove , née Demott, is the ranch's widow and heir. She used to take part in extreme mountaineering.
  • Eldon Demott , her brother, runs the ranch like his father did before. It is very important to him to manage the ranch in a manner that is environmentally friendly.
  • George Shaw is a cousin of Harold Breedlove and also an extreme mountaineer.
  • Tommy Castro went to school with Elisa Breedlove and has done extreme mountain tours with her brother and George Shaw .
  • Amoz Nez was tour guide for Harold and Elisa Breedlove when Harold disappeared. He is victim of an attack after the skeleton is found.
  • Hosteen Maryboy is the landowner at Shiprock and controls access to the only via ferrata to the summit, what he can pay for and what not everyone likes.
  • Dick Finch is the New Mexico State Cattle Inspector .

action

The criminal cases

Numerous cattle thefts anger Captain Largo, and he pressures Jim Chee and his investigative team to focus on it. Then there's the talkative cattle inspector Dick Finch , who doesn't seem to be cooperating openly either. Jim Chee is uncomfortable with investigating stolen cattle, nor does he like the bureaucratic tasks associated with his job as executive chief of the criminal investigation department. That's why he prefers to take care of the extreme mountaineer's skeleton, from Shiprock. Especially since the find seems to trigger further crimes. Joe Leaphorn recalls the disappearance of Hal Breedlove at the time . The case had been put on file as unresolved at the time. Joe Leaphorn is interested in this because there is now evidence that not everything turned out right then. In addition, the Breedlove family hired him as a private detective to gather information about what was going on at the time. Because at Breedloves Ranch there is a site with molybdenum and gold deposits . The Breedlove family would like to prove that Hal Breedlove's widow, Elisa, killed him to get hold of the inheritance.

While the criminal case about the missing Hal Breedlove takes place exclusively in the sphere of "white" culture, its official solution is very much committed to the "Indian" culture: When deciding between law and justice , the investigators opt for justice and "harmony", to be pursued in traditional Navajo culture.

Subplots

The love story between Jim Chee and Janet Pete this time suffers from the fact that Janet Pete and Jim Chee want to get married, but have completely different ideas about what life should look like afterwards. Janet Pete wants them both to go to a big city on the east coast and Jim to take a job with a police or judicial authority there. That would be possible, but Jim simply cannot imagine that he could be happy in the foreign culture and would like to stay on the reservation. So in the end there is something like a separation.

The young policewoman Bernadette Manuelito ("Bernie") doesn't make a good impression on Jim Chee at first , but turns out to be a resourceful policewoman and spares him with good ideas about cattle theft.

Louisa Bourebonette , an anthropology professor, and Joe Leaphorn were a couple at the end of the last episode. Louisa is not mentioned in this part of the series.

expenditure

Remarks

  1. ↑ This article was based on the 1st edition from 1998.
  2. ↑ 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”.
  3. ↑ In the first novels this form is given in the German translation as "Yaatalii" .
  4. ↑ "Hosteen" is not a name, but a respectful form of address for an older man.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ HarperCollins , New York 1996. ISBN 0-06-017773-X
  2. ^ Rowohlt Verlag 1996. ISBN 978-3-499-43292-7