"Listening Woman" by Tony Hillerman

Review by Madeline Salmon

My greatest concern about reading a series is always that the stories will all be the same. When I was eight and reading The Boxcar Children, I accepted and even enjoyed this predictability, but I'm jaded and less easily satisfied now. How will the same author, dealing with the same protagonist and the same setting, craft an original story?

This is my second Tony Hillerman novel, though it's the third in his Navajo mystery series. Don't read anything into my skipping Dance Hall of the Dead, which comes after the debut of the series, The Blessing Way (you can read my review of that one here). My source for these books is my mom's bookshelf and for whatever reason she doesn't have Dance Hall. It seemed like far too much work to go to the library and get it when there were already 16 others to choose from, so I decided I could live without it, despite its 1973 Edgar Award for Best Novel.

But this review is not about Dance Hall of the Dead, it's about Listening Woman. I'm happy to say that Listening Woman is even more suspenseful than The Blessing Way and except for Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn's fascinating detective skills and the marvelous desert setting, the two novels have very little in common. And Listening Woman is never predictable. Even though I knew there was a whole shelf full of books about Joe Leaphorn in the other room, I wasn't always entirely sure he would make it to the end of this one alive.