The complete Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee books by Tony Hillerman are:
- The Blessing Way (1970) (Features Leaphorn only)
- Dance Hall of the Dead (1973) (Leaphorn only)
- Listening Woman (1978) (Leaphorn only)
- People Of Darkness (1980) (Features Chee only)
- The Dark Wind (1982) (Chee only)
- The Ghostway (1984) (Chee only)
- Skinwalkers (1986) (First pairing of Leaphorn & Chee)
- A Thief of Time (1988)
- Talking God (1989)
- Coyote Waits (1990)
- Sacred Clowns (1993)
- The Fallen Man (1996) (First appearance of "Bernie" Manuelito)
- The First Eagle (1998)
- Hunting Badger (1999)
- The Wailing Wind (2002)
- The Sinister Pig (2003)
- Skeleton Man (2004)
- The Shape Shifter (2006)
Following his death in 2008, Hillerman's daughter Anne Hillerman announced plans to continue the Leaphorn/Chee series. Her continuation started publication in 2013 and gave a bigger role to the character of Bernadette "Bernie" Manuelito, with a new subtitle of "A Leaphorn, Chee & Manuelito Novel" to reflect this starting with Rock with Wings in 2015. Novels in this series written by Anne Hillerman are:
- Spider Woman's Daughter (2013)
- Rock with Wings (2015)
- Song of the Lion (2017)
- Cave of Bones (2018)
- The Tale Teller (2019)
- Stargazer (2021)
- The Sacred Bridge (2022)
The film The Dark Wind adapts the novel of the same name, starring Lou Diamond Phillips as Chee and Fred Ward as Leaphorn. The novels Skinwalkers, Coyote Waits, and A Thief of Time were adapted into television movies as part of PBS's Mystery! series, featuring Wes Studi and Adam Beach. A new series entitled Dark Winds, with Zahn McClarnon as Leaphorn and Kiowa Gordan as Chee, premiered on AMC in 2022.
Provides examples of:
- Badass Preacher: Chee is a trained Hatááłii, a healer and spiritual leader in traditional Navajo religion.
- Canon Welding: Leaphorn was actually created first in The Blessing Way. Jim Chee came later in People of Darkness. The two characters were finally brought together in Skinwalkers.
- The Cavalry: Amusingly, Leaphorn (who is Navajo) plays this role for Professor Bergen McKee (who is white) in The Blessing Way.
- The City vs. the Country: A source of tension in Jim Chee's relationship with Janet Pete, the half-Navajo daughter of a white socialite from the East Coast. She wants him to leave the rez behind and come back with her to DC as a polished FBI agent; he wants her to return to her Navajo roots.
- Death by Materialism: In Skeleton Man a man dies in a flash-flood when he could have saved himself by letting go of a bag of diamonds. Elsewhere, the materialism of mainstream American society is often commented upon as a source of disaster and unrest.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: The Blessing Way, Hillerman's first novel, does feature Joe Leaphorn in a major role, but the POV character is a white anthropologist who appears in exactly zero later books.
- The Exotic Detective: The Leaphorn/Chee series originally came across as this. Before Hillerman stories about Native American detectives on the rez were rare, although today it's a whole subgenre.
- FBI Agent: Homicides committed on the reservation are FBI jurisdiction, so they appear quite a bit. Individual agents such as Kennedy and Osbourne often get along with the Navajo Tribal Police, although the FBI as a whole is generally portrayed as a meddling and inept bureaucracy.
- Fake Nationality: Both an in-universe and a meta example. In Sacred Clowns Jim Chee, Janet Pete, and a Comanche agent of the Bureau of Indian Affairs attend the screening of a film about Comanches that actually used Navajo actors. It is commented that Hollywood apparently thinks all Native Americans look alike. Ironically, however, the TV adaptions of Hillerman's novels starred the Cherokee Wes Studi (Leaphorn), the Canadian Saulteaux Adam Beach (Chee), the Mohawk Alex Rice (Janet Pete), and other non-Navajo actors and actresses.
- Faux Action Girl: Hillerman's daughter Anne Hillerman thought Bernie Manuelito had shades of this, often coming across more as the "love-struck girlfriend of Jim Chee" than a strong law enforcement officer in her own right. She says she was happy that Manuelito was given a bigger role as a policewoman in Skeleton Man - in which she finds the missing jewels and confronts the villain - but was disappointed that she ultimately had to be rescued by Chee. Her father actually agreed with her. Anne gave Manuelito an expanded role in Spider Woman's Daughter. [1]
- The Film of the Book: Skinwalkers, A Thief of Time, and Coyote Waits were adapted for television as part of PBS's American Mysteries! series.
- Girl Next Door: Bernadette (Bernie) Manuelito, whom Jim Chee ends up marrying. She's a pretty, cheerful, down-to-earth fellow Navajo cop who is contrasted to Chee's previous love interest, the sophisticated, half-white lawyer Janet Pete.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: James Tso intended for his accomplices to all die in a bombing made to look like a murder-suicide. He dies when one of said accomplices, desperately trying to prove to Leaphorn that James would never betray them, sends the planned signal a couple of hours early, while he and James are standing right next to one of the bombs.
- Let Off by the Detective: Jim Chee at one point discovers the identity of a hit-and-run drunk driver after he makes an anonymous on-air radio confession, in which he promises to send the victim's family $200 a month as penance. Chee learns that it was a one-time incident and the man is caring for a grandson with fetal alcohol syndrome. Chee not only lets the man go but helps him evade arrest.
- The Lost Lenore: Joe Leaphorn's wife Emma. She dies from a post-surgical infection and Leaphorn never gets over it.
- Meaningful Name:
- Part of Navajo culture is that you get a real name known only to your closest family members, which describes you in some way. Bernie's is Girl Who Laughs.
- Henry Highhawk, from Talking God, is difficult not to read as "Henry Highhorse" by the middle of the book or so.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: The Villain Opening Scene of The Ghostway involves a TV personality, deeply in debt to the mob (of course), whose name sounds a lot like "Jay Leno."
- Old Cop, Young Cop: The Navajo Tribal Police officers Joe Leaphorn (older, world-weary, atheistic) and Jim Chee (younger, more idealistic, a practicing shaman).
- The Plague: The OG Black Death plays a role in The First Eaglenote , although none of the main characters catch it.
- Pragmatic Villainy: In People of Darkness, the hit man Colton Wolf kills as few people as he can manage (aside from his assigned targets), because the fewer people that are killed, the shorter the resulting manhunt is.
- Professional Killer: These pop up occasionally. Sinister Pig has a Retired Monster in the service of a corrupt Washington lobbyist, while The Ghostway has a survivalist working for a gangster.
- Real Men Eat Meat: Gender-flipped with Jim and Bernie. While Jim isn't a vegetarian, he still tries to eat a balanced diet. Bernie, meanwhile, actively avoids eating green vegetables and considers a salad something that you feed to something you'd eat.
- Ripped from the Headlines: Hunting Badger was based on the real 1998 robbery of an Indian casino.
- "Scooby-Doo" Hoax: Many of the crimes investigated by Leaphorn and Chee are often credited by more traditional Navajo as supernatural in origin. Chee often ties Navajo mythology into his understanding of the investigation.
- Shown Their Work: Hillerman's knowledge of Navajo culture is hugely extensive. He took great pains to be as accurate as possible.
- For a few books, whose plots took Chee or Leaphorn into neighboring communities, Hillerman added prefatory notes admitting his limited or imperfect understanding of those cultures (e.g. Zuni Pueblo in Dance Hall of the Dead), or explaining their real-world history (e.g. the Hopi village of Sikyatki in The Dark Wind).
- In the most recent entries to the series, Anne Hillerman adds a Navajo-language glossary at the end of the book, even including such neologisms as "the big cough."
- Skin Walker: The mythology is present in many of the Leaphorn/Chee novels, including one actually entitled Skinwalkers.
- Spared by the Adaptation: In the PBS films, Emma Leaphorn survives her cancer.
- Strange Cop in a Strange Land: Chee occasionally travels to other parts of the country during his investigations. He goes to Los Angeles in The Ghostway and Washington, D.C. in Talking God. In both cases being away from the reservation and in the city gives him mild culture shock.
- There Are No Coincidences: Leaphorn's personal philosophy, influenced by the Navajo belief in the interconnectedness of all things.
-
Unintentional Period Piece: Dance Hall of the Dead, published in 1973, features a hippie commune, a psychedelic drug experience, and references to the Vietnam War. - Uptown Girl: Both of Jim Chee's initial love interests Mary Landon and Janet Pete, successful career women who were not comfortable with life on the reservation, in contrast with the traditionalist Chee, who is happy to live in a trailer with his large family all in walking distance. His eventual wife, Bernie Manuelito, is as committed to the Navajo way of life as he is.
- Wham Episode: In Spider Woman's Daughter, Joe Leaphorn gets shot in the head and Louisa Bourebonette is one of the suspects.
- White Savior: Talking God's Henry Highhawk, a blond-haired, blue eyed archeologist, who upon learning he has some Navajo ancestry, decides to take on the tribe's fight for himself, regardless if the actual people on the Rez want it or not.
- Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: Touched on in Talking God. Neither the Chilean resistance, who convince Highhawk to set up a bomb at the Smithsonian and then kill him, nor the Pinochet government and the hitman they hire to bump off the resistance members come off looking very good.
