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The
Wailing Wind by Tony Hillerman Rating: • (Read if your interest is strong) |
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Blows The
Wailing Wind is the first Tony Hillerman book I’ve read. After that
experience, I’m not jumping to read his 24 other books. The 230 pages of
large typeface and double spacing makes reading the mystery proceed quickly.
Hillerman lays out clues gradually, and lets readers get into the Southwestern
geography and people comfortably. Relationships are described, but not
well-developed. Characters tend to be one-dimensional. Action proceeds
gradually. Mystery readers probably like Hillerman’s structure and enjoy
figuring out how to put his obvious clues together, and reward themselves when
they figure things out before the end of the book. My guess is that the
average Hillerman reader is a retired senior citizen. Here’s an excerpt: “The last name on
Leaphorn’s list seemed to have vanished with time – apparently part of the
nomadic movement of belagaana families who follow hobs around the country.
He spent the rest of the afternoon taking a look at part of the 130 square
miles that make up what was, when Leaphorn was a lot younger, the Fort
Wingate Army Ordinance Depot, finding the approximate place where the Garcias
had their fright, and trying to imagine what might have been happening to
cause it. When Leaphorn had driven past this place on U.S. 66 as a very young
man, it had been busy. Its bunkers, built for World War II, had been full of
the shells and gunpowder of the Vietnam War. With the end of the Cold War it
had been ‘decommissioned’ and had slipped into a sort of semi-ghost town
identity. The Navajo Nation stored records in a couple of bunkers; the army
used a bit of it on the edge of the Zuni Mountains to launch target missiles
to be shot at by the Star Wars scientists at White Sands Proving Grounds;
other agencies used a bunker here or there for their purposes, and TPL, Inc.,
had machinery set up in others converting the rocket fuel still stored there
to a plastic explosive useful in mining.” Unless you have a particular interest in
the mystery genre, an affinity for the desert Southwest and its people, or
ninety minutes to kill in mind-numbing reading, you may not enjoy The
Wailing Wind. Steve Hopkins, June 5, 2002 |
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ã 2002 Hopkins and Company, LLC The
recommendation rating for this book appeared in the July 2002
issue of Executive
Times Hopkins
& Company, LLC • 723 North Kenilworth Avenue • Oak Park, IL 60302 E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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