In his quest to unravel the threads left by his brother's death in Cambodia, Thomas Reed travels to the streets of Manila and the jungles of Cambodia, where he gradually pieces together the information that will lead him to his brother's lost child

En 1998, tres bandidos fuertemente armados salieron de los cañones de Four Corners en una camioneta robada. Mataron a un policía, sostuvieron un tiroteo con perseguidores y, finalmente, escaparon a una persecución que llego a reunir a cientos de agentes de más de veinte organismos estatales y federales. El delito y la desatinada investigación del FBI dejaron una secuela de mistenos: ¿Por quó se suicidó uno de los bandidos? ¿Cómo escaparon sus compañeros? ¿Por qué nadie, en una comunidad tan pobre, ha reclamado todavía la enorme recompensa ofrecida por el gobierno? Y, lo que es más confuso aún ¿qué delito iban a cometer cuando el agente Dale Claxton los detuvo, pagando por ello con su vida? Tony Hillerman encarga este auténtico rompecabezas a sus agentes de la policía tnbal navaja, el sargento Jim Chee y el lugarteniente Joe Leaphom. En la actualidad, el recuerdo de la desafortunada persecución de 1998 permanece dolorosamente fresco

An assassin waits for Officer Jim Chee in the desert to protect a vision of death that for thirty years has been fed by greed and washed by blood. Who would murder a dying man? Why would someone steal a box of rocks? And why would a rich man’s wife pay $3,000 to get them back? These questions haunt Sgt. Jim Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police as he journeys into the scorching Southwest. But there, out in the Bad Country, a lone assassin waits for Chee to come seeking answers, waits ready and willing to protect a vision of death that for thirty years has been fed by greed and washed in blood

Officer Chee attempts to solve two modern murders by deciphering the sacred clown’s ancient message to the people of the Tano pueblo. An Ancient Trust is Broken. During a Tano kachina ceremony something in the antics of the dancing koshare fills the air with tension. Moments later the clown is found brutally bludgeoned in the same manner that a reservation schoolteacher was killed just days before. In true Navajo style, Officer Jim Chee and Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn of the Tribal Police go back to the beginning to decipher the sacred clown’s message to the people of the Tano pueblo. Amid guarded tribal secrets and crooked Indian traders, they find a trail of blood that links a runaway schoolboy, two dead bodies, and the mysterious presence of a sacred artifact

Hillerman, author of the Joe Leaphorn mysteries, and Herbert, editor of The Oxford Companion to Crime and Mystery Writing, trace this short-story genre from its beginnings in the hands of Edgar Allen Poe through its development by the likes of Erle Stanley Gardner, Mary Roberts Rinehart and Anthony Boucher to its current practice by such masters as Marcia Muller. Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," which established a great many of the whodunit conventions, is indispensable to such an overview. Raymond Chandler's "I'll be Waiting" emits a doom-laden atmosphere right from the first line; William Faulkner shows unexpected economy of language?and a transparent plot?in "An Error in Chemistry." Ed McBain scores high marks in "Small Homicide," in which the tiny details of a baby's untimely death resonate uncomfortably. As represented in this competent, unstartling collection, Linda Barnes ("Lucky Penny") easily outsasses Sue Grafton ("The Parker Shotgun"). Hillerman makes a solid appearance with "Chee's Witch," and in "Benny's Space" Muller captures the full subtle force of her novel-length vision