Talking God

A murder and a desecrated cemetery on the Arizona/New Mexico border draw in two Navajo investigators: Leaphorn, a police officer, and Chee, an anthropologist. Neither case has an obvious culprit, and the trail does not stay in the Southwest.

The inquiry leads east to Washington, D.C. There the killing meets a conspiracy that reaches into the Smithsonian, where a plot to steal sacred artifacts is under way. Two questions drive the book: who the killer is, and what the conspiracy intends.

The story follows two protagonists, Leaphorn and Chee, and builds slowly toward its Washington climax. Its mood is atmospheric and tense rather than strictly procedural, and the theft of the artifacts sets a clock running under the investigation.

The desecration of graves and the ethics of how museums collect and keep sacred objects sit at the centre of the case. They give the crime plot a weight beyond whodunit. What the thieves are after, and who will stop them in time, keeps the pages turning.