Who steals the past

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Who Steals the Past is the eighth detective novel in a series by Tony Hillerman . Entitled A Thief of Time , he published in 1988 in English , in German for the first time in 1990 in the Rowohlt Verlag .

Anasazi pottery of the 12th / 13th centuries Century

context

Anyone who steals the past is an ethnic thriller. The action takes place in the northeast of the US state of Arizona and the sparsely populated Navajo Nation Reservation there . Central figures and investigators are Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee , two officers of the Navajo Tribal Police ( Police of the Navajo Nation Reservation). This novel is Tony Hillerman's second after The Night of the Skinwalkers , in which he has Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee investigated together.

people

  • 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 . For some time he has also been Hatathali , someone who has mastered the ritual chants that are used when a person no longer lives in harmony with himself and his environment and therefore falls ill. He is still waiting for someone to hire him to celebrate such a ritual chant.
  • 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. That made him depressed and he applied for retirement .
  • Janet Pete, lawyer . She was introduced to the plot in the previous novel, The Night of the Skinwalkers . She and Jim Chee grow closer, especially since Jim Chee believes his relationship with Mary Landon has come to an end.
  • Dr. Eleanor Friedman Bernel, a archaeologist whose specialty, the ceramic of the Anasazi is.
  • Maxie Davies, another scientist who conducts archaeological digs in Anasazi settlements.
  • Randall Elliot, an anthropologist , and friend of Maxie Davies.
  • Bo Arnold, a biologist, specialty: lichens . He is with Dr. Eleanor Friedman-Bernel friends. He also owns a canoe .
  • Bob Luna, US National Park Service employee . He is married and has two school-age children.
  • Harrison Houk, local politician, cattle breeder and antiques dealer on the side , who is not too specific about the origin of the pieces. Twenty years earlier, he lost his entire family in a family tragedy, and that was when he met Joe Leaphorn.
  • Slick Nakai, an evangelical revival preacher who also deals in antiquities.
  • Joe B. Nails, a robbery
  • Jimmy Etcitty, excavator at Maxie Davies, guitar player in the service at Slick Nakai and also robbery.

action

The criminal case

Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee investigate two different issues, but it soon becomes clear that both are related. Joe Leaphorn tries to find out what happened to the missing Eleanor Friedman-Bernel and whether she is still alive. Jim Chee is initially investigating a stolen trencher that, as it later turns out, is used for robbery excavations. The unifying element is the search of both the scientists and the robbers' graves for the ceramics that can be found in the archaeological sites of the Anasazi.

Subplots

The love story between Jim Chee and Mary Landon, which begins in the novel The Wind of Evil , seems to end. She went to Wisconsin to study and never came back. Jim Chee and lawyer Janet Pete grow closer.

Emma, ​​Joe Leaphorn's wife, has passed away. In his grief, he wants to quit the police force. But since he suspects that Emma would have played a major role in clearing up the fate of the missing Eleanor Friedman-Bernel, he becomes increasingly interested in the search. In the end, he decides to ask his colleague Jim Chee to work for him as Hatathali and to perform a healing ceremony with him.

Relation to other works

The mystery novels of Tony Hillerman build up to Indian culture. While the crime in the first novels is usually carried out of the "white" culture into the Indian world, this pattern fades in the following episodes. In Who Steals the Past, the motive and the perpetrator - with the exception of a few marginal characters - are again rooted exclusively in the culture of the “whites”, while Navajos act as investigators.

expenditure

Remarks

  1. ↑ The 3rd edition was used for the article.
  2. ↑ He determined in the first three novels: 1. Wolf without a track , 2. Shots from the Stone Age , 3. The labyrinth of spirits .
  3. ↑ He determined in the following three novels: 4. Death of the moles , 5. The wind of evil , 6. The taboo of the dead spirits .
  4. ↑ In the previous novels this form is given in the German translation as Yaatalii .
  5. ↑ The German translation uses the English term " anthropologist ", which describes a different research area in German.
  6. ^ In the catalog of the German National Library (incorrect) as "[1. Edition] ”.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Harper & Row , New York 1988. ISBN 0-06-015938-3
  2. ^ Reference in the catalog of the German National Library .
  3. ↑ Information according to the catalog of the German National Library .
  4. ^ Catalog of the German National Library .