The Story Teller [Mass Market Paperback]

Margaret Coel (Author)

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback
• Publisher: Prime Crime (2002)
• ASIN: B000XYD5LO
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,303,788 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Margaret Coel is the author of four nonfiction books and many articles on the people and places of the American West. Her work has won national and regional awards. Her first John O'Malley mystery, The Eagle Catcher, was a national bestseller, garnering excellent reviews from the Denver Post, Tony Hillerman, Jean Hager, Loren D. Estleman, Stephen White, Earlene Fowler, Ann Ripley and other top writers in the field. A native of Colorado, she resides in Boulder.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars NOT The Formula Mystery, May 12, 2000

By 

Mark Valentine (Port Angeles, WA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Story Teller (A Wind River Reservation Myste) (Paperback)

For some of us, it's enjoyable to read a mystery NOT about finding jewels, treasure maps, precious uranium and the like, but an adventure tale about recovering a lost book, a ledger book, in fact. Coel's mystery picks up with characters she has introduced already in her previous novels: Vicky Holden, an Arapaho attorney, and her colleague, Fr. John O'Malley. Together, the unlikely pair track down a pictographic story drawn in a ledger book detailing the Arapaho involvement (as some of the slain)in the Sand Creek Massacre in 1864. The book is important for the pair to discover because it could be used to reclaim lands taken from them so long ago.

The mystery moves in a measured tempo, with a true rising action and a finale that reads in a flash.

Yet the power in this tale, at least for me, lies in the characterization of its two protagonists, current-day pariahs, as heroes, struggling against the revisionist Historians (--History is written by the winners, goes the adage--) set to try to win again.

Of course, I won't tell you how it ends. Enjoy!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Southwest mystery reminiscent of Hillerman, August 21, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Story Teller (Wind River Reservation Mystery) (Hardcover)

The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGRA) allows tribes to reclaim some of their artifacts from museums, who must provide a list of their collection. Recently the Denver Museum of the West provided a list to the Arapaho Cultural Director Dennis Eagle Cloud, who in turn showed it to elderly storyteller Charles Redman. "Grandfather" immediately claimed the museum omitted the ledger that contains the stories of Chief Niwot as scribed by No-Ta-Nee.

Attorney Vicky Holden explains to the pair that they have no legal recourse in obtaining the ledger. Dennis explodes and accuses his fellow tribesperson as being Anglicized after a decade amongst the whites. Vicky starts to argue back, but stops when Grandfather asks her to look for the book. She reverently agrees. However, before she can begin her search, a Arapaho student is killed while seeking the missing book. With the help of Father John O'Malley, a pastor on the Wind River Reservation, Vicky inquires into the invaluable historical account of her people while trying to ferret out a murderer.

Margaret Coel's latest Native American mystery, THE STORY TELLER, may be her best work to date as she brilliantly ties together a who-done-it with Native American culture. The characters all ring true as they rapidly propel forward the tribal conflict with assimilation, the puzzle of the missing agenda (that provides much insight into the Arapaho lifestyle), and the murder mystery. Ms. Coel is one of the top story tellers of the sub-genre, ranking with the likes of Tony Hillerman. Fans of the contemporary Native American mystery should also read THE DREAM STALKER, THE GHOST WALKER, and THE EAGLE CATCHER for a collection elite novels.

Harriet Klausner

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Never A Dull Moment, January 3, 2007

By 

Rachel Elaine - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Story Teller (A Wind River Reservation Myste) (Paperback)

Margaret Coel has the ability to transport the reader to a different world, to a place where her characters live and breathe, once opening the first page of one of her books. You will surely not want to put the book down until the mystery had been solved, this one spanning the Wyoming Wind River reservation to the busy streets of Denver, the southern plains of Colorado and back again.

Coel is a stunning Storyteller herself. Skillful, studied, straightforward, smooth, strategic, sublime, sizzling, solid, sonorous, spacious, succinct, spicy, suspenseful, stupendous, substantial, spotless, superb and other superlatives could readily summarize her stories.