A Thief of Time, by Tony Hillerman
Plot: 5
Writing: 5
Characters: 7
Page Turner: 5
Rereadability: 2
Overall: 5.5

This mystery by Tony Hillerman is an adequate mystery novel. It's set in the American west, modern day, on and around various Indian Reservations, like a dozen more of Hillerman's popular mysteries.  I don't read many mysteries, and this was the first Hillerman book I got all the way through, and it wasn't bad, but it wasn't anything special.  The characters were pretty interesting, or at least different than the sort of characters you usually read about. They had some variety, being non-white guys, and were doing things that you probably haven't read about a dozen times already (assuming you aren't a big Hillerman fan).

The problem was that they didn't really do anything all that interesting, and the plot was rather small. By "small" I mean that it wasn't a huge case threatening world stability, or even one that affected dozens of lives. It's not that type of story; it's not a James Bond movie or a Tom Clancy spy thriller, or even a sexy, action-filled big city crime caper. It's just a couple of hard working regular guy cops trying to find a missing person, and then following the leads from that crime to the one that spawned it to the next one, and figuring out how it all relates in the end. And as the mystery genre requires, the mystery is all wrapped up in the end, the guilty are caught and punished, and everyone (except for the dead people) live happily ever after.

The cops and most of the principles in the novel are Navajo, and the mystery takes place entirely on and around a number of Indian Reservations in the desert of the American West. The scenery and culture and landscape are major portions of the story, almost characters themselves. The Navajo culture certainly is important, and Hillerman paints a very vivid picture of what life is like there, and what the Navajo people are like in this modern day; still greatly influenced by their history and the slow-paced nature of their life in a harsh climate, while also influenced by modern America.  It's not done in a preachy or lecture-y sort of way either, it's nicely worked into the story.

The writing is okay; Hillerman isn't going to win any awards, but he does dialogue pretty well, and the insight into the slow moving, patient life style and outlook of the Navajo was well done and interesting. His writing is much like the desert setting. Sparse and underwatered; formed of the minimum required words and ideas. The 250 page novel could easily have gone 400 pages, in the hands of a more verbose writer, or even one who liked to put in more details. Whether a much longer version with more detail would be bad or good depends on your personal taste in writing style. I could have done with more adjectives and description, myself.

The mystery concerns a vanished anthropologist, who may or may not be a "pot digger." That term refers to the booming market for authentic Navajo and other Native American artifacts, and the hundreds and hundreds of burial grounds scattered all around the reservations, many of which hold tens of thousands of dollars in Indian artifacts. People are digging them up and selling them all the time, illegally, and the sub plot of that criminal enterprise is overlaid with the hunt for the missing archeologist. There's a lot of nice personality investigation, as the Navajo cops figure out what kind of woman the vanished individual is, what she was working on, where she might have gone, when she thought she'd be coming back (soon, based on a very involved marinade recipe she left stewing in her fridge) and so on, and there are other clues and tie ins to past crimes and mysteries as they gradually unravel the plot.

While the plot wasn't very large or the ending very thrilling, I did like that the case and the people involved in it are just parts of the larger world. Not everything stops for them, not everyone is involved in or cares about their case, and just like in real life, lots of leads and clues throughout the book don't end up tying into the main investigation at all.  This isn't some Sherlock Holmes case where everyone on earth knows about the case and knows Holmes and is either there to aid or hinder him. Most of the people encountered in A Thief of Time could give a rat's ass about the cops or the investigation, and there are other crimes seen in the novel that don't tie into the missing person investigation at all, and the cops aren't trying to bring down some huge criminal underworld via their one case.

That being said, I didn't give it a higher score since it's just sort of there. Lots of the book was good, I liked the characters and the world, the mystery was intelligent, but Hillerman didn't do enough with it to earn a higher score from me. 

I will probably try some other novels by Hillerman, though. My dad has been a big fan of him for years, and he told me that this was not one of the better novels, though it's not one of the worse ones either. I've got Skinwalkers checked out now, and it's one of Hillerman's' most popular stories, so I'll give that one a try and report back at some point. Basically, you need to be patient and very interested in the characters and the world of the novels to make it through this one, since it's very slow and boring in places. But then again, I'm clearly not a huge Hillerman fan, so YMMV.

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