It’s rare that a book in a mystery series can be so different from the rest of the series and yet still fit. THE SHAPE SHIFTER fits that description. Even its opening chapter is a departure from the get-the-action-going formula at which Hillerman excels. This book opens on our hero, the legendary Lieutenant Leaphorn in an awkward social position, paying a call the newlyweds Jim and Bernadette, apologizing for missing their wedding and bringing them a gift basket. Hardly the grisly imagery we’ve come to expect.
Most of the rest of the book is told as a flashback, another oddity for the series, but it works. Hillerman died two years after this book was published. I don’t know if he meant it to be the last book in the series, but if fulfills that roles very well. The book ends with Leaphorn seeming to make peace with his retirement. His use of Navajo legends and supernatural imagery as way of avoiding implicating himself on the crimes of which he might yet be accused was a wonderful counterpoint to his previous need to bring all crimes into real human terms. It shows him letting go of his defined role as a policeman and returning to his role as a Navajo man, who being forced to attend a white boarding school, missed out on his cultural childhood.
As with many character-driven mysteries, the actual mystery isn’t much of one, though the anticipation of the gathering of proof is engaging. While the gathering of proof is never actually completed, the end takes on a very satisfying Nero Wolfe like justice being done shortcut. Satisfying for the reader perhaps, but not for Leaphorn’s sense of right and wrong. He pays some dues, literally, but at the end of the book you sense that he’s pulling himself out of the game.
I’ve now read all of Hillerman’s Navajo mysteries, of course not in order. Some lazy time soon, perhaps after my next novel is written, I’m going to reread them in order. I can hardly wait.
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