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156 of 187 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
The worst yet, I'm afraid, November 25, 2006
This review is from: The Shape Shifter (Hardcover)
Tony Hillerman's Navajo series includes a few of the best books in the genre: Skinwalkers, A Thief of Time, and Coyote Waits, for example. But for some years now, the books have been poorly written and what is more tiresome, miserably edited. HarperCollins obviously doesn't see any reason to clean up a Hillerman manuscript. They are ignore contradictions, spelling and grammar errors, mistakes with names, and inconsistencies. And the fulsome reviews that sell the books at Amazon justify HC's contempt for readers.
This book is terrible. It is full of tired diction. The pat phrase overused in this one is "Lt. Leaphorn, retired": start keeping count when you get bored. It's not as irritating as "the legendary Lieutenant" (which turns up occasionally), but it gets old fast.
The "experimenting" with chronology is simply bad plotting. Joe can't be "retired a few months" if Jim and Bernie are married, except in an alternate universe. And Louisa is apparently not living with him any more, but he's forgotten she ever did, so it's Ok. In fact, maybe we are supposed to think Joe is getting senile, because at one point he ponders that something was "why he had decided to go home"; the problem? He's in a motel room for the night, obviously not "going home."
But the real clincher is the crime itself. As the story develops, we are supposed to believe that an international mega-criminal worth millions would set up an elaborate robbery of a trading post in the middle of the Navajo rez. At the end, Leaphorn mentions the genius of the guy because "he always left no witnesses." Unfortunately, he says this to one of the three witnesses to the trading post crime; in fact, one of three accomplices he spents weeks with and then betrayed to the police. Fortunately, the witness is too polite to contradict him... those Navajos, always polite.
At one point, Hillerman seems to realize that the trading post robbery seems a bit, well, out of character for his mega-criminal. So he quickly does some self-justifying math. He points out that the post took in about $100 a day and they often didn't bank the money for weeks. Oh, that's different. The worth millions arch criminal stakes the place out for months so he can score 2 or 3 grand, for which he commits multiple murders! Not only ruthless and arch, but petty.
Anyone who calls this one of Hillerman's best is insulting him. I have pages of reviews of his books and others like it at my site; this book is embarrassing. With the millions Hillerman has made in the Chee/Leaphorn franchise, he could hire an editor of his own to keep these books up to the standard Hillerman himself set and few have equalled. Instead, he is cranking out feeble imitations of his own work.
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48 of 57 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Loved the rug, but the story is disappointing, December 4, 2006
This review is from: The Shape Shifter (Hardcover)
Several of Tony Hillerman's latest efforts have been disappointing. He seemed to have gotten away from what his readers loved. Joe Leaphorn was playing second fiddle to several other characters; there was less of an emphasis on Navajo rituals, mythology and religion, and in one rendition (THE SINISTER PIG) he'd gone so far as to leave the reservation altogether.
Apparently Tony has been listening to the criticism, because in THE SHAPE SHIFTER Joe Leaphorn is back at center stage, the mythology is back, and Joe spends most of the book driving around the reservation, giving us a good look around. Some of the great minor characters are back as well, the best of which is Grandma Peshlakai, who was greatly irritated with Joe as a young man when he couldn't find the thief who'd stolen her buckets of pinyon sap.
Shape shifter is just another name for skinwalker and there's another one on the prowl in Hillerman's latest mystery. The newly retired Leaphorn is trying to find out why "Woven Sorrow," a Navajo rug supposedly worth in the neighborhood of two hundred thousand dollars which supposedly burned in a gallery fire, seems to be hanging on a wall in LUXURY LIVING, a magazine he's been shown. Hillerman's description of the rug and the story behind its weaving gives him an opportunity to wax poetic about Navajo mythology. We're also treated to a mini-sermon on Navajo religion. The Navajo elders had condemned the rug because it violated the Navajo tradition: The Dineh taught its people to live in peace and harmony, and the rug seemed to be harping on past transgressions, including Bosque Redondo and The Long Walk Home.
The plot deals with Leaphorn's efforts to find out whether a serial killer who was supposedly burned up in the gallery fire is still at large. The man who owned the rug in Luxury Living, Jason Delos, soon becomes a figure of interest. Tommy Vang, Jason Delos's Hmong houseboy, gives Hillerman a chance to compare Hmong and Navajo mythology.
Unfortunately the rest of THE SHAPE SHIFTER doesn't live up to the mythology and religious aspects of the book. There's practically no suspense. Hillerman tips his hand almost immediately. Anyone who reads a lot of mysteries will figure this one out twenty pages in. There's also a lot of repetition as Leaphorn spends most of his time interviewing possible witnesses and drinking coffee. He drinks so much coffee it's hard to understand how he ever gets any sleep.
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18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Probably an unpublished draft from earlier in the series, April 20, 2007
This review is from: The Shape Shifter (Hardcover)
THE SHAPE SHIFTERS is a thin book: thin on story, the plotting is horrible, and the (bad) editing is beyond belief. Also, a few principal characters are unbelievable (Tommy Vang comes to mind) as are their motivations (the antagonist fits in here). So, what happened with this book? Good question. The answer might be that it's a draft of an earlier book that was never finished. Given the sequence of events (Leaphorn's "recent retirement," living or not living with Louisa, the technical inaccuracies on driving distances, etc.), I think this was a book that should have been published earlier in the series, but now, badly re-written and edited to fit into the current sequence. And, as a result, the book is a mess.
It would be pointless to recount the story because there isn't much to it. You can figure out the bad guy in the first 30 pages. All the clues are there and what is astonishing is that the FBI and Leaphorn could not figure it out when they investigated the original deaths back in the 1960's. Astounding given the evidence they had available to them. So, then, where does that leave us?
This was a history lesson that did not work as a mystery. It's one of Mr. Hillerman's misses in terms of fusing Navajo history and folk lore with his experiences (and the U.S. involvement) in Vietnam. The tales of the woven rug are very well written and that's the heart and star of this story. When the novel ventures overseas (flashbacks only) to Vietnam with the history lesson of Tommy Vang's people (even with the similarities to the Navajo), the story runs out of steam and gets bogged down in an unbelievable arch that does not work and really, makes no sense. Why would this smart and rich person kill someone over a few thousand dollars?
There are rumors that Mr. Hillerman has been sick and hasn't been well since his brother died several years ago. Maybe his personal issues have taken a toll on his writing - it happens. In my opinion, he reached his peak with A THEIF OF TIME, a book where EVERYTHING works so extraordinarily well - the pacing, the story, the tension, the plotting, the locales, the history; it's an outstanding book (and my personal favorite :-).
Until Mr. Hillerman throws in the towel, I'll continue to buy and read his books (in paperback; someone gave me this copy) because I'm a huge fan of the desert Southwest - a place of unparalleled beauty and vast, open spaces.
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