Coyote Waits (A Leaphorn and Chee Novel)

first, the exceptional: great characterization; great opening events and mystery; great pacing. I was fully ready to give this a 5 and just earlier today texted my brother to tell him this is one of the best books I've read in a long time. Then, I got to the last 1/4 of the book.

the ending is by no means terrible, but it was pretty disappointing. A great deal of intrigue is established in the first 3/4 of the book. We have potential CIA/military mysteries. More than that, we have the potential of Navajo religious figures permeating the real world. Coyote and skinwalkers and all kinds of interesting stuff.

The ending simply didn't live up to any of the most interesting implications. It ended up being a very mundane and, well, kind of boring.

Hillerman is a terrific writer. His prose was very easy to read. His characters were complex but ultimately likable. But he worked so effectively at firing up the imagination that when the ending winds up being very commonplace, it was very disappointing.

Still, the book kept me glued to it from the start and I feel glad that I got to know the characters in it. Definitely a worthwhile read. The ending just fell flat for me, so much so that I felt almost as if I'd been manipulated with the more imaginative carrots that were dangled in front of me earlier in the book.

I have been reading Tony Hillerman's books for about 30 years. Now, with the help of Goodreads, I am reading all the ones that I missed. This book starts with Navajo Policeman Jim Chee finding the dead body of fellow Navajo Policeman Delbert Nez, shot dead and inside his burning patrol car. Officer Chee gets badly burned pulling Nez out of the burning car. Chee feels guilty that he wasn't there when Nez was killed and even though he is on sick leave recovering from his burns, he sets out to find out what happened to Nez.
In the meantime, a shirttail relative of Navajo Police Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn comes to him and tells him that her uncle, Ashie Pinto, arrested for Nez' murder, is innocent. Leaphorn tells her that the FBI has jurisdiction on all felonies committed on the reservation, but agrees to look into it. Chee and Leaphorn come at this case from different angles, but do solve the case in a very well written mystery. All the pieces come together in a satisfying ending to the plot, but a sad commentary on Native American problems.
Hillerman includes a lot of information on Navajo traditions and the local landscape. He was made an honorary member of the Navajo nation because of his very accurate portrayal of their way of life in his books. I highly recommend this book and the series. Read them in order if possible(unlike me). I rate this library book 4.5 out of 5 stars(rounded up to 5).

Jim Chee sits drinking coffee while partner Tribal Policeman Delbert Nez meets his demise. Chee catches the obvious perpetrator. A Navaho shaman, with a bottle in one hand and THE gun in his belt. Case closed.

Because of his guilt at not backing up his partner and at the insistence of Chee’s on again and off again relationship with the defending attorney, Janet Pete, Chee must find out for him self what happened and if he may have made a mistake.

Because of a relationship through is dead wife with Ashie Pinto’s (the defendant) clan and also being pushed by Dr. Bourbonette (anthropologist), who insists that Ashie is being railroaded, Joe Leaphorn but also investigate from a different angle. He is constantly thinking about what his dead wife Emma would say in the situation.

Both men are pushed into what looks like an endless amount of overlapping mysteries of which the murder of Delbert Nez is just one. They – and we - must deal with the history of the CIA and that of witches.

Sacred Clowns

In Coyote Waits, Jim Chee makes a mistake on duty and a friend of his, another police officer, ends up murdered. Chee believes that he has caught the perpetrator of the crime, an act that is the best he can do to atone for his error, but things also don’t seem quite right. Why would a kind old man, a shaman, kill a police officer in the middle of nowhere. So, Chee, and eventually Joe Leaphorn, end up on the case, trying to unravel the mysteries of the night.
Coyote Waits, to me, is a good, but not especially great, Hillerman novel. I admired a lot of the things that I always admire--the characters, the wisdoms of Navajo culture, the feel of the landscape, the characterizations. This book provided an especially melancholy take on both Chee and Leaphorn--Chee saddened in unrequited love for Janet Pete and despairing of his dual vocation as police officer and shaman and Leaphorn struggling with the sadness brought on from his wife’s death. The novel did draw a little extra dimension to these two characters, and I enjoyed that.
What I thought was slightly weak was the plot. Specifically, the way the story unraveled seemed too simple. In fact, little that Leaphorn and Chee do in the novel ends up mattering. That’s maybe realistic, but it also felt likely slightly cheap storytelling, or at least plotting.
So, this is a good installment of the series, for the culture and characterizations that are always enjoyable. In terms of plot, however, this one falls a little short of the mark set by other great entries into the series.

I first saw Tony Hillerman novels twenty years ago and was interested but never took the time to read one. Until now. The title grabbed this animal lover.

Having grown up in the Southwest, I felt homesick reading about the Navajo reservation in New Mexico and Arizona. It helped me appreciate Navajo culture.

There is a message in the book. It could be that the book was written for that reason, or it could be that the theme just developed during the writing and was really more of what the character wanted to say than the convictions of the author. In my opinion, it seemed a little preachy on the subject (I happen to agree with the author or character on that subject by the way). The theme was present for the story, but came out stronger in the end.

Key questions: 1) Would I recommend this book, and 2) will I be reading more of Hillerman? While I enjoyed it, it did have some very minor language issues (one cuss word was used three times) which is a concern for me, so I will make that a caveat. I enjoyed it enough that I may read more of Hillerman, but not so much that he's moved to my rotation of writers to read up on. But if I'm homesick for Arizona, I might read another one.

If you love mysteries please try this series. In fact, read any mystery by Mr Hillerman. Each character is carefully drawn. Both detectives have unique styles. Absorbing stories interwoven with tribal beliefs and traditions.

In many Native American traditions, Coyote is both a mischievous trickster and a mythic figure embodying Chaos, waiting in darkness to swallow the best efforts of humanity. In this superb mystery, Tony Hillerman extends the metaphor to show his Navajo policemen, Leaphorn and Chee, each unknowingly working the same case from opposite ends, each trying to piece together the pattern underlying seemingly random events.

Chee's the arresting officer. His friend and fellow officer was laughing over the radio at finally finding the mysterious graffiti artist who was spraying white paint on the black basalt rock formation. Chee delayed going in for backup and when he got there, his friend was dead in his burning patrol car. He found shaman Ashie Pinto with a bottle of expensive whiskey and a gun stuck in his waistband. It looked like an open and shut case.

But then Joe Leaphorn gets involved. Pinto's sort of family, a distant clan relative. How did he get to the murder scene when he hasn't driven for years? Why did he take the sacred tools of his shaman's trade? And who gave him the whiskey?

One reads this first for the mystery--which is so gripping one can scarcely put the book down. One reads it again because the characters are so likable and engaging and because the setting is beautifully evoked. Years later, I picked it up to refresh my memory and found myself hooked again by the story. This time I realized the power of the title and how Hillerman wove this tale within the metaphor of Coyote, master of chaos, waiting hungrily in the dark to undo the good of mankind. Hillerman wrote with the same vividness one sees in the famous Navajo rugs and makes the mythology of Navajo culture come alive.

Tony Hillerman died on October 26, 2008--an American original. This review posted by a grateful fan.

Veteran mystery writer Tony Hillerman turns out one of his better efforts in Coyote Waits, a Leaphorn/Chee detective story. Hillerman's stories always bear certain commonalities. One of these features is that the lead protagonists, Leaphorn and Chee never seem to both be fully on active duty with the Navajo Tribal Police while they are tracking down a mystery that is somehow just outside their authority. Leaphorn is still on active duty in this one, but Chee is on medical leave because of burns he suffers in the fiery death of a fellow officer.

Hillerman's mysteries are typically well-constructed with more than one plausible villain. But Hillerman's weaving of Navajo culture and the desert southwest landscape into the heart of his stories gives them their distinctive character. In Coyote Waits the accused killer is a gentle old Navajo medicine man who has been earning money relating Navajo tales to anthropologists.

The accused is represented by Janet Pete, a lawyer with the federal public defender, a Navajo, and maybe Chee's girlfriend. That relationship, however, introduces some implausible elements. Chee was the arresting officer of her client, but then they work together trying to find out whether the old man really did it or not. Apparently it is too much to expect Hillerman to examine this conflict of interest and improper communication with a material witness.

And of course it would not be a Hillerman book without at least one editing blunder - a conversation involving has the speaker first identified as Chee, then Leaphorn, and then Chee. But that was the only one I noticed, a much better record than his more recent books.

In Coyote Waits, Hillerman delivers his trademark southwestern, Navajo tribal mystery without a lot of other frills. Great literature it's not, but it is distinctive within the mystery genre and well worth a read.

A friend suggested that I try one of Tony Hillerman's books and COYOTE WAITS is the one that I picked up. After finishing it, I was really glad that I had listened!

This is the story of murder and mystery on a Navajo reservation located in Arizona and New Mexico (it crosses the border into both states). A Tribal Police Officer is murdered and an old shaman (medicine man) is charged with the murder. Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn (both Tribal officers) go their own ways to try and solve this case and end up crossing paths several times. Hillerman then throws in the family of the shaman who is trying to get someone to believe in his innocence. Next in the story is a young, female public defender that has just returned from Washington back to the place where she grew up and her first assignment is this case. A missing history professor in search of Butch Cassidy and a few other asundery characters are added to the mix for good measure. They all total a wide variety of personalities and ideas, which is part of the intrigue of COYOTE WAITS.

This story was very interesting and at times suspenseful. It's more of a mystery type story than a tale filled with suspense, but it is very well done. The characters are vivid and seem to be mimicked from real-life people. The reservation, customs, and Indian myths are accurate and well described. These are interwoven into a book that wets your appetite for more and Tony Hillerman has a long list from which to choose.

This book was the beginning of my journey with Hillerman, and if the others are as enjoyable, I will be very pleased.

I have enjoyed Tony Hillerman's stories for a long time now. One is never like the previous mystery, but is fresh and new. His work will be enjoyed for a long time, and he is sorely missed.

Coyote Waits was another excellent read, once again set in the vast land of the Navajo Reservation, where Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee do their best to maintain peace, beauty and order. Even in the scene which looks like an Ansel Adams picture, greed, mayhem and murder can transpire. Here, where no gumshoes walk the beat, the evil coyote waits. The people of the story are as real as desert heat of the day. The plot moves in and out, leaving you wondering if an old "witch doctor" is as guilty as Chee initially believes, or as innocent as Chee ponders as the story moves on. Leaphorn and Chee pursue a different sort of "time bandit", who could possibly deceive them all. Justice, however, comes about via a young lover.

A great story, and I recommend it.

As a reader whose interest is in the literature of the American West, rather than mystery writing, I had to be encouraged to read Tony Hillerman. And it was a happy discovery when I read "Coyote Waits." With his cast of Navajo characters, including law officers Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee, the author introduces readers to the world of the modern-day reservation and the surviving Navajo culture in the Four Corners area of New Mexico and Arizona.
The coyote of the title, from Navajo mythology, represents a darker side of human psychology, as it is understood by these Native Americans. It stands for the unexplainable destructive forces that disrupt all efforts to achieve the ideals of peace and harmony. Hillerman's understanding of Navajo customs and values, the legacy of white domination, and the complexities of law enforcement on the reservation makes the chapters of his book read like a fascinating social history.
You can also read this book with a road atlas open beside you. Hillerman places the story in a real world of highways, dirt tracks, natural landmarks, and small reservation towns, with side trips to Albuquerque. The descriptions of landscapes and the play of sunlight are vivid, and there is frequent reference to the changing autumn weather. I recommend this book to anyone with an interest in well-drawn characters, the American West, and Native American culture and life.

Tony Hillerman delivers in COYOTE WAITS, another of his Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee mysteries. As usual Hillerman masterfully weaves Navajo traditions, culture and references with modern crime in the Southwest.

COYOTE WAITS pits the skills of Leaphorn and Chee against a marauding phantom with a paint can who is out defacing the natural formations of the desert. Doesn't sound like much, does it? Well, it isn't. When a fellow tribal policeman turns up dead while pursuing the painting vandal the plot inevitably thickens.

COYOTE WAITS also makes dynamic statements about some of the terrible problems that continue to face Native Americans in the Four Corners area. Hillerman's genius is obvious here. His narrative employs believable characters that confront real-life problems in ways that invite the reader to stop and consider that very real issues are out there and need to be addressed.

A great book.

THE HORSEMAN

Picked this up at Albuquerque airport after five days home in the Four Corners and devoured it in one sitting on the plane ride home. Hillerman captures the Southwestern USA as a character like Randy Wayne White captures Southwest Florida, Robert Goddard captures Southwest England or Jim Thompson captured Texas.

The pacing and economical emptiness of writing of Hillerman's books goes perfectly with the climate and geography where they are set. Spend some time on Native American lands and you'll get the point. Hillerman has the New Mexico/Southwest/reservation/Four Corners nailed -- at least, one big aspect of it. His books also are unique -- no one else has carved out the same niche.

I liked the realism of the law enforcement officers jumping to a quick conclusion about how the killing went down that might not stand up to scrutiny. There are cases like the one in the book where it's just very easy not to look a whole lot further, and candid cops will tell you that.

I also like Chee and Leaphorn and how Hillerman gives us two complementary characters, the one older and wiser but perhaps a tad closed to originality, the other younger and more impulsive but also more able to look outside the lines, think outside the box.

Thoroughly entertaining, quick read.

This book was devoted to the Navajo Tribal Policemen killed in the line of duty, often in remote areas, and without back-up. The book feels real, as if Hillerman had the tragedy of the killing of an NTP officer in mind when he wrote it. The end also deals with an issue that sometimes plagues the Navajos-acaholism. In this installment, Chee also deals with his conflicted heart over Janet, a half-Navajo woman who, in hose and high heels, wants to put a rope on him and get him a job off the reservation and make a white man out of him.

Hillerman is such a dignified author. That probably sounds strange but his books are well written, well researched, and he makes it obvious that he loves the Four Corners area and the people who live there. He bestows great respect on the religions and beliefs of the Native Americans from that area, and it is interesting to see how they differ from one another, and how they are the same.

As in so many real life murders, people die for the dumbest reasons. In this case, it was over a possible finding of Butch Cassidy in the area, who had robbed a train. The skelatonized remains of the men with the money lay deep in an area considered taboo by the Navajos, yet one member of the tribe who has the ability to use crystals to find things is bribed with liquor to find something within this area which is considered evil. A tribal policeman gets shot along with other innocents who just happened to be in the area, and all of this leads Chee and Leaphorn to do some research of their own.

I guess this is far enough into the series that Leaphorn is starting to learn respect for Chee, who has a tendency to go off on his own, and doesn't always obey the rules.

The tidbits given about Coyote and the importance of making choices between good and evil in the Navajo religion are of great interest to me, and I will continue to enjoy Hillerman's novels. It helps that he is so prolific...

Karen Sadler

The conclusion of *Coyote Waits* is the most powerful and affecting of all Hillerman's "Navajo mysteries." Leaphorn has his monsters to slay: alcoholism, superstition. They come together here in a complex mystery that begins with Jim Chee botching a crime scene and lead from there through a maze of deception and misdirection. When we emerge into the sunlight, the truth is heartbreaking.
For my money, the sentimental best of the series. *A Thief of Time* may be better writing and plotting, and *Skinwalkers* may have the best suspense, but this is the story that will stay with you for days and return to haunt you when you see your next drunken Indian dozing away despair in tenement shade.

Silverman against writes a mystery that will hold your attention. They seemed to get better as I read them. Jim Chee is late coming to the aid of friend and fellow policeman. He pulls his friend from a burning only to find him DEAD. In the process he is badly burn. He does arrest the shooter. Joe Leaphorn'wife, Emma is a clan relative of the arrestee and he becomes involved as there are several answers questions. I read this in one sitting as I found it difficult to put down. I am ready to read the next THE SINISTER PIG.

Ashie Pinto is arrested for the murder of Delbert Nez, a tribal policman. Neither Leaphorn or Chee believe the man is guilty, but the old man will not say a word in his own defense. THE COYOTE WAITS is one of my favorite of the Hillerman series because of the complex plot, which has Chee and Leaphorn going in different directions.
I've heard the coyotes howl at dusk as they have migrated east. They are always hungry and waiting.
Nash Black, author of SINS OF THE FATHERS.

Coyote Waits take us beyond the Trickster' disguise and faces us with the response in nature to men's choices and actions. Tony strips away the cultural cloaking (denial) of our place in Nature, and ours/Natures response ability. He is becoming more than an enjoyable writer, he is evolving our understanding of our Nature.

This book has been recommended to me many times since it was released and I just now got around to reading it. Extraordinary characters populate a beautiful landscape, playing off one another to tell a compelling yet sad tale about an old man, greedy academics, alcoholism, Navajo mysticism, and murder.

I look forward to reading more of Mr. Hillerman's novels.

I have never been partial to mysteries, but I love Tony Hillerman's Navajo themed books. I first saw the movie version of Coyote Waits on PBS, then I just had to read the series. It makes me miss Arizona, where I have adoptive family at the Hopi Reservation.
Wonderful and exciting stories.

I enjoyed reading the book Coyote Waits, by Tony Hillerman. This book got me into it right from the beginning.This book has suspense, mystery, action, and a little bit of history. Coyote Waits starts out a little boring, but gets to the story pretty fast within the end of the first chapter. This book had good vocabulary and some foreshawdoing. Over all i enjoyed reading this book and i give it four stars.

One never knows where evil will come from and that is why one must always be on guard or so it seems when you read Tony Hillermans novel "Coyote Waits". It is the authors message that if you seek to do something of an evil nature Coyote is sure to make a meal out of you.
I enjoyed this book. Not until the very last had I suspected that a simpe inoccent act of love could develop into something tragic

I have never been partial to mysteries, but I love Tony Hillerman's Navajo themed books. I first saw the movie version of Coyote Waits on PBS, then I just had to read the series. It makes me miss Arizona, where I have adoptive family at the Hopi Reservation.
Wonderful and exciting stories.

I enjoyed reading the book Coyote Waits, by Tony Hillerman. This book got me into it right from the beginning.This book has suspense, mystery, action, and a little bit of history. Coyote Waits starts out a little boring, but gets to the story pretty fast within the end of the first chapter. This book had good vocabulary and some foreshawdoing. Over all i enjoyed reading this book and i give it four stars.

One never knows where evil will come from and that is why one must always be on guard or so it seems when you read Tony Hillermans novel "Coyote Waits". It is the authors message that if you seek to do something of an evil nature Coyote is sure to make a meal out of you.
I enjoyed this book. Not until the very last had I suspected that a simpe inoccent act of love could develop into something tragic