Coyote Waits

Written by Tony Hillerman

Narrated by George Guidall

The car fire didn't kill Navajo Tribal Policeman Delbert Nez—a bullet did. And the old man in possession of the murder weapon is a whiskey-soaked shaman named Ashie Pinto. Officer Jim Chee is devastated by the slaying of his good friend Del,
and confounded by the prime suspect's refusal to utter a single word of confession or denial.

Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn believes there is much more to this outrage than what appears on the surface, as he and Jim Chee set out to unravel a complex weave of greed and death that involves a historical find and a lost fortune. But the hungry
and mythical trickster Coyote is waiting, as always, in the shadows to add a strange and deadly new twist.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 13, 2023
• ISBN: 9781705063866

Tony Hillerman

TONY HILLERMAN served as president of the Mystery Writers of America and received the Edgar and Grand Master Awards. His other honors include the Center for the American Indian’s Ambassador Award, the Spur Award for Best Western Novel, and the Navajo Tribal Council Special Friend of the Dineh Award. A native of Oklahoma, Tony Hillerman lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico, until his death in 2008.

Reviews for Coyote Waits

[lgcullens · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Idly rummaging through some used books on the salvaged table at the village recycling station, the cover of this book caught my eye. Seeing it was one of Tony Hillerman's books, I began thumbing through it and recognized the book as one of the Joe Leaphorn / Jim Chee Navajo Tribal Police series I'd read (likely in the 1990s).

Academics, murderous villainy, rattlesnakes, skinwalkers, and even Butch Cassidy all mix in the twists of this tale. Coyote is a trickster in much of Native American myth, and Coyote's imposed fate plays a guiding role in the solution of this plot's puzzle. 'Gently impressive mystery fiction' is the best phrase I've come across to describe Tony Hillerman's writing.

I've found Tony Hillerman's books an enjoyable pastime over the years, and having spent a little time in the Four Corners region could easily visualize the settings.

[m.belljackson · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Landscape and realism great as usual, but killing off Delbert Nez felt awkward,as did the oddly paced Vietnamese sequences, making the mystery tough to follow.

[sandyamcpherson · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Enjoyable series and this one doesn't disappoint. Character development was especially enjoyable as were the evocative landscape descriptions. There were a couple implausible aspects with the inclusion of Ji, an extraneous Vietnamese character which didn't add to the storyline . However, intertwining the Coyote myth with a current murder mystery was clever.

[rosalita_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The 10th entry in the Leaphorn/Chee series of Navajo mysteries. Chee arrests an elderly Navajo man for murdering a fellow police officer, then continues investigating when his erstwhile girlfriend questions the man's guilt. Meanwhile Leaphorn begins investigating the case from another angle. They both end up in the same place eventually and justice is more or less served.While I continue to enjoy the insights into Navajo culture, I'm afraid I'm not finding these books very interesting as mysteries. Part of the problem is that I also don't find either Leaphorn or Chee appealing in and of themselves as characters (though Leaphorn is by far the more compelling, and I wish Hillerman would have dumped Chee and gone back to a solo protagonist). And I'm kind of tired of how the viewpoint switches back and forth between their perspectives as they work the same case from opposite ends of the reservation.Ultimately, I feel like I'm learning something for my own good instead of being entertained, which is fine as far as it goes but it goes less and less far with every book.

[ffortsa · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The best so far of the Tony Hillerman mysteries, with Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee. Chee lets another tribal policeman chase what the latter considers a vandal, and ends up pulling his dead friend from a burning car. His guilt pushes him to investigate, even though he arrested the man everyone presumes is the murderer, an old man walking drunk down the highway after the shooting, holding the murder weapon and a bottle of Dewars.Joe Leaphorn is approached by distant relations of his late wife, people related to the man Chee arrested, to investigate, because they can't imagine he would ever kill anyone.Naturally, the two policemen cross paths, not immediately, but in a satisfying way at the end. It's not the beginning of a beautiful friendship - but maybe something else.Very satisfying in every way. 5 stars.

[tjsjohanna_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Taking place on home territory, this story shakes Jim Chee up and brings Leaphorn and Chee together with tension between the two - which is interesting reading, since I continue to persist in thinking of them as friends (!). Mr. Hillerman continues to explore the personal lives of his two famous policeman while telling a compelling mystery and even pulling in the persistent rumors of Butch Cassidy surviving the run-in down in South America. Enjoyable read, done well.

[dougwood57 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Veteran mystery writer Tony Hillerman turns out one of his better efforts in Coyote Waits, a Leaphorn/Chee detective story. Hillerman's stories always bear certain commonalities. One of these features is that the lead protagonists, Leaphorn and Chee never seem to both be fully on active duty with the Navajo Tribal Police while they are tracking down a mystery that is somehow just outside their authority. Leaphorn is still on active duty in this one, but Chee is on medical leave because of burns he suffers in the fiery death of a fellow officer. Hillerman's mysteries are typically well-constructed with more than one plausible villain. But Hillerman's weaving of Navajo culture and the desert southwest landscape into the heart of his stories gives them their distinctive character. In Coyote Waits the accused killer is a gentle old Navajo medicine man who has been earning money relating Navajo tales to anthropologists. The accused is represented by Janet Pete, a lawyer with the federal public defender, a Navajo, and maybe Chee's girlfriend. That relationship, however, introduces some implausible elements. Chee was the arresting officer of her client, but then they work together trying to find out whether the old man really did it or not. Apparently it is too much to expect Hillerman to examine this conflict of interest and improper communication with a material witness. And of course it would not be a Hillerman book without at least one editing blunder - a conversation involving has the speaker first identified as Chee, then Leaphorn, and then Chee. But that was the only one I noticed, a much better record than his more recent books. In Coyote Waits, Hillerman delivers his trademark southwestern, Navajo tribal mystery without a lot of other frills. Great literature it's not, but it is distinctive within the mystery genre and well worth a read.

[mrslee_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I have all the Sayers, Stout, Ellis Peters and Laurie King books, my mom has all the Hillerman books. We trade back and forth. This is not so much a review of Coyote Waits as an opinion of the Hillerman works. The only thing lacking to make these ideal for me is humor, but it wouldn't work to have them be silly. There is so much interesting information about the Dineh and other history of the Southwest and the characters and mysteries are great. Also, I don't think he throws in sexual activity to liven up the story. That's a plus and hard to find in modern writers.