Listening Woman (Joe Leaphorn) by Tony Hillerman

#3 in the Leaphorn series and one of the best

Like most fans of Hillerman, I've read them all. I'm sporadically going back through them and re-reading ones that I read more than a decade ago.

I've grown used to the older Leaphorn, the one that uses his head and thinks through problems and mostly avoids the physical stuff. This one is a younger Leaphorn that uses his head but gets involved in a lot of physical action. This one would make a great movie, but since I've not been happy with the few adaptations that I have seen I guess that I would prefer that no one make the attempt.

Tony Hillerman (1925-2008)
Lots of Navajo culture is introduced in Listening Woman. This one lays the groundwork for a lot of the future books, including introducing multiple characters and does a lot of exploration into Leaphorn's quirky sense of interested agnosticism in regards to Navajo religious beliefs. The plot centers around a couple of murders and lots of discussion of Navajo witches and a dark family secret.

This one would be a good one for a book discussion group.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

Reviewed on May 2, 2009.

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