Sacred clowns
First there was the trouble at Saint Bonaventure boarding school. A teacher is dead, a boy is missing, and a councilwoman has put a lot of pressure on Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn and Officer Jim Chee -to find her grandson. Sitting on a rooftop watching sacred clowns perform their antics in a Puebla ceremonial, Chee spots the boy. Then, suddenly, the crowd is in commotion. One of the clowns has been savagely murdered. Without a single due, On and Leophorn must follow a serpentine trail through the Indian dons and nations, seekig the thread that links two brutal murders, a missing teenager, a bond of lobbyists trying to put a toxic dump site on Pueblo land, and an invaluable memento given to the tribes by Abraham Lincoln in a fast-paced, flawless mystery that is Hillerman at his lyrical evocative, spellbinding best.