The First Eagle

Tony Hillerman's The First Eagle sends Navajo Tribal Police officers Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee into a story that braids murder with the real-world specter of plague carried by rodents and their fleas across the high-desert Four Corners. Hillerman, who lived and wrote in Albuquerque, built his reputation on procedurals that take Navajo land and belief seriously rather than as backdrop, and this 1998 entry shows the careful research and reverence for place that made him an honorary friend of the Navajo Nation.

The striking jacket is the work of illustrator Peter Thorpe, whose bold kachina-and-pueblo motif became a signature of the HarperCollins Hillerman hardcovers. This copy carries the "First Edition" line, though its number row resolves to a later printing rather than the true first state. Even so, a clean Leaphorn-and-Chee hardcover in its original Thorpe jacket is exactly the kind of Southwestern mystery worth keeping on the shelf and in the record.