Landscape and Place in Tony Hillerman’s Mysteries

L E O N A R D E N G E L Quinnipiac College Landscape and Place in Tony Hillerman’s Mysteries Beginning with The Blessing Way (1970), and continuing with Dance Hall of the Dead (1973) and Listening Woman (1978), Tony Hillerm an features the resourceful and extremely logical Lt. Leaphorn. Leaphorn seeks what may be seen as a central truth of his Navajo background, taught by the female deity Changing W oman— “that the only goal for m an was beauty, and that beauty was found only in harmony, and that . . . harm ony of nature was a m atter of dazzling complexity.” Leaphorn reads the point of the lesson as emphasizing the “interdependency of n ature”; there is in all things “a pattern, and in this pattern, the beauty of harmony. ” O ne m ight distill from this maxim L eaphorn’s raison d ’ etre, his goal as a police officer in solving crimes, and his reason for deciding to becom e a cop in the first place. Finding clues, sifting evidence, following tracks, that is, searching out the pattern in things, if pursued, should logically lead, not only to the solution of a crime, but to the “beauty of harm ony” and ultimately to the “interdependency of nature.” In spite of these inspired words and high-m inded thoughts, look­ ing for the pattern has on m ore than one occasion exposed Leaphorn to some mighty evils and endangered his life. In evil and dangerous cir­ cumstances, one can clearly see L eaphorn’s similarity to other wellknown fictional detectives. C. Auguste D upin, Sherlock Holm es, H ercule Poirot, Nero Wolfe, Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, and Lew Archer, to nam e a few, have all seen plenty of evil and have been at serious risk. And like Leaphorn, these famous crime solvers have cer­ tainly looked for a pattern in their investigations and have often found it, but to imagine Spade, Marlowe, or any of them, believing that searching for the pattern would lead to the “beauty of harm ony” and the 112 Western American Literature interdependence of nature would be ludicrous. They search for pattern and solve crime because their client is paying them , or because it’s their jo b and they pride themselves on doing it well, or because they’re tough and sm art and nobody else can do it or wants to, or because they’re just plain curious. These reasons partially explain L eaphorn’s search as well, for most of his cases are police procedurals, and looking for pattern in crimes is part of his job. However, these reasons do not necessarily satisfy L eaphorn’s sense of justice, nor do they em brace his major concern— they d o n ’t, as it were, represent the bottom line in his epistemology. L eaphorn’s persistent, almost obsessive, search for pattern fulfills not only his role as a tribal policeman, but verifies his perception of the truth of the Navajo Way. This logically means reestablishing his position in relation to the earth; therefore, a vital relationship to the land is a crucial ingredient both to L eaphorn’s detecting techniques and to his identity. This essay will examine H illerm an’s use of landscape and place in two of his novels, Dance Hall of the Dead and Listening Woman', I will argue that L eaphorn’s picking up clues and “rem em bering tracks” lead not only to his awareness of beauty and the “interdependency of na­ ture,” but ultimately to his Navajo identity. O n the surface, H illerm an’s use of landscape imagery is not unlike that depicted in traditional western fiction and film where there is a well established connection between the hero and the land. This enduring connection in W esterns of the past continues into the present in con­ tem porary fictions, like H illerm an’s, and in recent W estern films like Dances With Wolves, Unforgiven, The Last of the Mohicans, and A River Runs Through It. However, Hillerm an refashions this relationship between hero and landscape in a new and startling way. Hillerm an renders an intricate, m ultidim...