Customer Reviews

Thief of Time, A Low Price: Thief of Time, A Low Price

5 star:		(30)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Lt. Joe Leaphorn and Officer Jim Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police join forces in Hillerman's imaginative series on crimes occurring in or around the four corners country of the Southwest. Leaphorn and Chee track down a killer and along the way travel throughout the vast Navajo nation imparting arcane data on Native American pots, shards, and rituals.

Leaphorn and Chee's murder investigation touches on the "thieves of time;" those persons who desecrate and often destroy Native American archaeological sites in their fervor to collect ancient artifacts. The officers decipher clues leading to the identity of a killer who leaves bodies at Anasazi sites which have been looted. The interchange between Leaphorn and Chee, both said and unsaid, forms the main contrast in this book. Both men are interesting but Leaphorn is a more complex person; an aging Indian nearing the end of his career.

Known as the ancient ones, the Anasazi have been the subject of numerous studies by academia as to their origin and demise ranging from speculation to sober reality. The end result is conjecture although Hillerman is able to touch on the Anasazi lifestyle and history with a sure and steady hand.

There are more than 140,000 Native American sites registered within the states of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. Registration is required and approval is needed from the U. S. Government before digging can be undertaken by archaeologists at any of these sites. Unfortunately, the vast majority of sites are unidentified and thus unregistered. If they are identified, they are often unprotected and subject to vandalism by anyone.

Many of the unregistered sites are located on private land allowing the owner or others to remove aritifacts under cover of law. Some Indian artifact stores in the Southwest have knowingly bought stolen artifacts but the proof required to convict the owners is often lacking.

Hillerman introduces a reader to more than murder within the pages of his books. The various facets of the investigation opens the door to a reader's mind. Hillerman's main purpose is to educate a reader to the Navajo and Hopi tribes; their rituals, their people, and the gentle pace of their hard won existence.

Read Hillerman's series of books on Leaphorn and Chee. You'll become as addicted as millions of other readers have.

This is the first Hillerman novel I picked up and it won't be my last. The story centres around the unexplained disappearance of an anthropologist who is suspected of being a 'thief of time' or pot hunter. While Lt. John Leaphorn and Officer Jim Chee look for the missing person, recent dead bodies are discovered at plundered sites. It's up to Leaphorn and Chee to find out who's causing all this destruction before they find another body.

As an anthropology student, I liked Hillerman's detailed research and his obvious respect of the Navajo Nation. As a mystery reader, I liked the police story line and how it fit quite nicely with Hillerman's anthropological angle. Great read and I hope to read more from this exceptional author.

Having spent 30 years in Law Enforcement, and knowing forensics, and how much down and dirty investigating goes into solving a crime, and having a keen interest in Archeaology, I felt that Mr. Hillerman is a master of combining police work, Archeaology, suspense into one believable mystery. His intertwining of Indian culture, and modern day police work is ingenious. I have read all of his books twice or more. I love them.

Mystery Buffs should not miss Hillerman's work.

The story is engaging, and the historical background is enlightening. This abridgement for audio, however, leaves a little to be desired. Compressed to 2 cassettes, the jumpy action allows insufficient time for character development. Having the author, who is not a trained actor, read the script compounds the editing problems. Hillerman's southwestern drawl, delivered in chesty baritone, is authentic and pleasant to listen to, but it is often impossible to tell which character is speaking. They all sound the same. He also has distracting pronunciation problems (e.g., "heeliocopter") and when he intones "Chee said..." it sounds like "She said...," adding to the confusion. This is one title that is best appreciated unabridged in print.

Did you know you can take a topographical map of the Four Corners area and track every arroyo, every butte, every mesa and canyon and rio seco mentioned in Hillerman's books? They're all there. Just get yourself a 4-wheel drive vehicle and go off road and have an adventure as you read each of his mystery tales. Right where he says the truck in his book went left into what looks like an untracked wilderness down a barely-visible double track leading to god knows where, sure enough, there those faint tracks in the dust appear.
Set against the backdrop of the long-vanished Anasazi, Hillerman weaves a complex tale setting Anglo culture against the values of the Dinai, the Navajo tribal people. Elderly Joe Leaphorn and brash newcomer Jim Chee (with one foot in the spirituality of the Navajo healers and the other in the Western world) combine forces to solve the mystery surrounding the disappearance of an anthropologist.

"A Thief of Time" is the eighth book in Tony Hillerman's Navajo detective series, but the first one to make national best seller lists and propel him into bigtime literary stardom.

"Thief" is one of Hillerman's least mysterious mysteries, but one of his most interesting books. He tells of the Anasazi, the ancient ones, an amazing proto-civilization of a thousand years ago that left ruins and potsherds scattered all over the austere, forbidding desert country of the Four Corners area. The mystery deals with ancient pots, the "thieves of time" who dig up graves and sell the pots they find, and of ambitious archaelogists who strive to make their reputations by discovering the secrets of the Anasazi.

Navajo detectives Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee confront several mysteries: a missing archaeologist, a stolen backhoe, and the bodies of two pot thieves. For Leaphorn, the solution to the mystery goes back twenty years into his past to a canyon along the San Juan River in Utah.

Atmosphere is what Hillerman sells in his books and this one has it in abundance. Navajo culture and ceremonies, modern police work, and the treasures of the Anasazi are woven together into a landscape of pure, clean-aired natural beauty. The weather -- thunderstorms, droughts, sudden blizzards, the thunderheads of approaching doom -- is also prominent in Hillerman's novels. His books combine elements of mysteries, westerns, and exotic culture -- and they are really, really worth reading.

This may not be his best work (and I have read them ALL many times over), but it is nonetheless a good one. To me, the pleasure of reading Hillerman's Navajo police books is not so much in the storyline, as in his masterful and atmospheric rendering of the setting, culture, and characters. If one is purely a mystery buff, there are many other authors who may fashion a more intriguing or complicated plot. Very few, however, can capture the essence of place, time and motivation the way Hillerman does, and that is what, for me, makes his books a joy to read.

Hillerman really knows how to spin a good tale and tie together all sorts of different subplots together into one knot as they all interrelate. Joe Leaphorn doesn't believe in coincidences, and neither does the author. And nothing simply coincides in his books, all the subplots come together neatly.

An anthropologist disappears, two men are found murdered, a backhoe is missing and Joe Leaphorn, who's wife has recently died and is retiring from the force, wants one last big case before he quits. He cooperates with junior officer Jim Chee who just wants to find out who stole that damned backhoe and murdered those two men in the truck.

The book is really full of surprises and has a totally surprise ending. Not the one that I was really hoping for or betting on, but it was a shocker. A little hard to follow all the plots coming together however, which was why I gave it only 4 stars instead of 5.

The first Hillerman I ever read - I read it without even taking a break to eat - couldn't put it down - made you smell the night, the trees - if you didn't like mysteries, you could immerse yourself in the Southwest and the Indian culture - the characters are magnificently drawn. The ability to transport the reader so thoroughly is beyond anything this mystery buff has ever experienced.

The Thief of time is a beautifully written and observed piece, it is thriller, mystery, life, saga and page turner. Jim Chee is set on detecting just who has stolen the flat bed truck from the police depot - a theft that seems to be more about buck passing within the force rather than detection. While he is supposed to be watching a back hoe is stolen from the depot.

Meantime Joe Leaphorn, only days away from retirement after the death of his beloved, Emma, is put on to a case of Grave Robbing. A respected archaeologist, Eleanor Double-barrelled-surname, has been accused of stealing pots from Anasazi grave sites. Only when Leaphorn turns up at the accommodation it seems she is actually missing.

Leaphorn's second senses are aroused when it turns out the backhoe and flatbed truck appear to be related to whatever has happened to the missing woman too.

The ensuing novel is a wonderful crossing over of crimes, of lives intertwined, of coincidences which turn out to be significant later on, and nicely observed human foibles. Beaneath all of this Leaphorn is mourning for his lost wife and trying to come to terms with his life without her. It is a nice intertwining of his life prior to meeting her and his life how, and reflected in the lives of the two archaeologists who are left at the site.

Jim Chee, meanwhile, the more traditional of the two policemen, is struggling with his own personal life - the teacher he loved has gone back to her life away from the reservation, and he is left wondering if the lawyer, Janet Pete, could be the one for him. Their personal lives are anything but straightforward. While the personal lives does not play at centre stage, as the reader, you are aware of what underlies the personal lives of the detectives.

The climax of the novel draws all the seeming loose strings in together beautifully. There is redemption where it is needed and loss is muted.

I have really enjoyed these novels, the places, the people, the culture and characters. I would highly recommend this series, in fact it has my hightest recommendation!