Customer Reviews

The Fallen Man

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(22)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

It was so nice to catch up with Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee again that the story was almost secondary. Joe has always been my favorite of the two, but Jim Chee's character really captivated me in this one. Every part of this book has something to recommend it. The mystery is intriguing. The process of solving the mystery is very interesting. And the resolution is perfect when considered in the light of the Navaho search for harmony and balance. All in all, a great read. Now, if Mr. Hillerman could just write them as fast as I read them, all would be well.

The value of Fallen Man for me is in the fact that it has once again revived a mental relationship between myself , Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn. As a longtime reader of Tony Hillerman, the reunion of these characters to his fictional writings was a welcome event. I must admit I did'nt even read his previous book which left out the famous Navajo sleuths I so enjoy. To see his book Fallen Man featuring the tribal dynamic duo was a happy occasion. While some may find fault with it, in comparison to other Hillerman books, I found it did exactly what I desired. It transported me to that great Southwest, the Four Corners region and the read was filled with history, folklore and tribal "stuff" that I thrive on. May'be I bought the book for it's primary characters, but nobody can make these characters live like Hillerman. Nobody can make me want to go to Tuba City, or Gallup, or drive down State route 666 like Tony Hillerman. For about three hundred pages I'm transported out of the ordinary routine and placed into the beauty of the Southwest I love. I only wish he could write three a year. I will do exactly with Fallen Man what I have done with all of Hillerman's books on this topic, when my "Hillerman fix" can't be satisfied with a new book, I'll read it again. If you love the Southwest and have a "sixteenth" of Native American in you, like we all say we do, read one of these books and your are hooked forever.

"The Fallen Man" by Tony Hillerman, Harper Audio, 1996.

Tony Hillerman has another great mystery novel, with the obligatory dead man being discovered on the mountain known to Whites as Ship Rock. The author traces back eleven years to when the accident occurred, and then develops the reasons why the death could have been premeditated murder. While he is dealing with this murder mystery, Hillerman also develops the characters, so that you feel the sorrow of the widower, the retired Leaphorn, and then understand the anxiety of Acting Lt. Jim Chee as he deals with hard choices of his once and future fiancé (who wants a citified life while Jim wants a Navajo life). I think that Mr. Hillerman develops the Navajo characters better than the white characters, who, really, are just bit-players in the drama being presented. Interestingly, I think that the author truly has presented a romance novel on three levels: the lost love of the widower, Leaphorn; the mixed-up choices of Lt. Chee and the love story of Hal Breedlove and his wife (who remains true to him as a widow for eleven years).

I found this book to be well written and to contain a wealth of information on the Four Corners regions of the United States. All the distance mistakes, etc., that the other reviewers alluded to are hard to discover if you are listening to the book on tape and can not easily refer back to different pages. This book helped me in the traffic, on the trip back and forth, from Plymouth, Massachusetts to Quincy, Massachusetts.

This is a detective novel, with a cultural twist that I found entertaining. The addition of insights into the Navajo culture clearly enhanced this book and made it into something significantly better than the simple "who done it" it would otherwise have been.

Although this is the first Hillerman book I have read, I was very shocked by the way the book began thoughout its development to the way it ended. The story its self is excellent with a ouitstanding plot. What could be more interesting then two Navajo Tribal Police (one an active policeman and one retired) try to solve a missing person case that is eleven years old. The plot was well developed but often two choppy to follow. I mean the Hillerman went from one extreme to the other. I really enjoyed the development of Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn, both were realy ture to their characters. Chee the younger of the two is caught up with his people and his girlfriend (Janet Pete) and Leaphorn is the older one with the experience and smarts. Although I found the book to be a little confusing, I really couldn't put it down once I began to read. I was to excited to find out the answer to the case. The book was really good to the ending when I really counldn't figure out who the culprit was. Once again, this is the first Hillerman book I ever read so I can't compare to other books of his but I would recommend this book to others. Overall I enjoyed The Fallen Man and I will continue to read Tony Hillerman.

I'd been waiting for the new Leaphorn and Chee novel for a long time. This is NOT my favorite in the series; however, it is still a thinking person's novel that happens to evolve around a murder mystery and the conflicts between the cultures of the American West.

The strength of the novel is the development of the two central characters, Jim Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police and Joe Leaphorn, his former boss-now retired. There are, however, a few too many obvious plot devices for this reader to rate this as highly as some of the other Hillerman novels. I'd picked out the probable guilty party relatively early on--in both the main plot and one of the sub-plots. And the scene in which Chee is shot seems formulaic--the sort of formulaic touch of violence that I have come to associate with certain other novelists. (E.g., In a Dick Francis novel, you know the protagonist is going to be shot or beaten up at least once--with sort of noble, non-life-threatening consequences, usually with a semi-heroic endeavor a few pages later. Chee's shooting is not quite that formulaic, but it's as close to that as I've seen in a Hillerman novel.)

The relationship between Anglo and Navajo cultures is not handled as deftly as in some of the earlier novels. For example, Chee's half-Anglo half-Navajo love interest seems a less well-developed character than she has in some of the other novels. And one key similarity between Leaphorn, Chee, and one of the Anglo characters struck me as under-developed, thereby making part of the ending seem less than satisfying.

The book also appears to be the least well-edited of Hillerman's--one character's name replaces another at a key point, and certain phrases of speech are repeated exactly a couple of times.

But because of the characters of Chee and Leaphorn, I was willing to overlook all this and enjoy the novel. Both are terrific fictional characters. I was sorry to see the book end--I wanted to stay with Chee and observe the next chapters in his life.

In short, if you have not read Hillerman before, start with one of his earlier Chee and Leaphorn novels. After you have become interested in these two characters, come back to this novel for the latest chapter in their story. If you are already a Hillerman fan, fear not, the characters are strong enough to make this a solid, above-average read.

While a good story, and as usual set in the Southwest (I live in Santa Fe), this book was not up to the standards of plot complexity, suspense and adventure that captivated us in his earlier books. I was also surprised at the number of writing/editing mistakes in the book. For example: Page 43 talks bout Mrs. Breedlove's green eyes, while on the next page it refers to her light blue eyes. Page 96 refers to Hal Breedlove as Hal McDermott, using the last name of the Washington lawyer. Page 245 talks about the female officer standing by "his" vehicle. If this book was written by a top notch writer and edited/ published by a big name publishing house, how did such errors get into print? I found no such errors in Hillerman's earlier books. I do, however, look forward to his next book.

I am always struck with the descriptive beauty Hillerman manages to bring to his narratives, and this edition upholds his tradition. The scene involving the oncoming storm was so real I felt a chill enter my room. Again Hillerman kept me guessing until the very end as to what the motive was, and whodunit. My only disappointment was that Hillerman didn't finish the book. After so much detail on rustling, all we get in the end is a small paragraph on the perp being caught. Come on Tony you can do better, or is this just a teaser for the next one?

Fallen Man is a real page turner that invites thoughts about man's place in nature and our society's use and misuse of our natural world, the source of our economy. The contrast between the way our society interacts with nature and the way that Native American culture viewed and treated the earth is marked and thought provoking. The characters are interesting and fun to spend time with. The sense of place is strong. I will be giving this book to my father ( a resident of the Southwest) for a Father's Day gift.

I look forward to the next Jim Chee/Joe Leaphorn novel like a five-year old looks forward to Christmas. Jim Chee is studying to be a shaman, and in the early novels, LISTENING WOMAN, THE SKINWALKERS, we get to look over his shoulders and learn about the various Navajo rituals, the most interesting of which is the skinwalker ceremony. You see, the Navajo believe in ghosts. They believe that the living can be inhabited by the spirit of the dead. Many of the old timers go so far as to burn down their hogans when there's a death. Logically then, according to a Navajo, anyone who, say, commits a murder or molests a child must have been inhabited by this evil spirit, hence the name skinwalkers.
Almost as interesting as the rituals is the vast scope of the reservation. In THE FALLEN MAN a man has been murdered on sacred Ship Rock, seventeen hundred feet above the desert floor. To make matters worse, he isn't found for another eleven years.
Joe Leaphorn, newly retired and at a loss for something to occupy his time, connects the skeletal bones to another murder, that of an old canyon guide, shot down by a sniper. Jim Chee, an acting lieutenant in this one, has a father/son relationship with Leaphorn. Chee wants to look good in Leaphorn's eyes, but he always seems to mess up somehow. Leaphorn is Charlie Chan to Chee's Number One Son. Leaphorn is taciturn, Chee more volatile. Leaphorn mourns his dead wife; Chee has more woman trouble than a gynecologist.
I know Tony Hillerman is getting older (he's in his seventies now, I guess), but I wish he'd find a little bit more time to write. I've been reduced to reading some of the Hillerman clones and they just don't measure up.