Ancient Enemy (Howard Moon Deer) by Robert Westbrook

Full of gimmicks, but it still works!

Synopsis:

Ancient Enemy is part of a series of novels about Howard Moon Deer, a highly-educated Sioux Indian who is living in Northern Arizona and helping Jack Wilbur, a blind ex-police chief from San Francisco run a detective agency near the Pueblo Indians. By the way, Howard Moon Deer knows absolutely nothing about being a detective. They run across a couple of murders involving the Pueblos and an ancient Anasazi town and human remains that may have the key to their disappearance centuries ago. The title refers to the Navajo name for the Anasazi.



My review:

Robert Westbrook

Sound gimmicky? Sound like a bad detective show like Jake and the Fat Man or Remington Steele? Sure it does, but it still works. Mostly it works because Howard Moon Deer is as much of a fish out of water as the reader is. Although he is a Native American, the Sioux are not like the Arizona Indians at all. Plus, he has pretty much abandoned his Indian ancestry in search of a doctorate in literature. So, the characters are interesting, the books stand alone very well since this is my first one but it is the third in the series. The anthropology of the Anasazi and the Pueblos made the book very interesting for me

 
I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Ancient Enemy.
 
Reviewed in  February of 2005.