Listening Woman

 

By Tony Hillerman

This was the third Joe Leaphorn  novel, published in about1970.

An old unsolved bank robbery by a militant First Nations group is somehow connected to the deaths of two innocent people: an old man dying of what is probably cancer and young teen girl, neither of whom has any apparent connection to either dissidents or bank robbers. But Navajo policeman Joe Leaphorn's investigation of the two murders at a lonely Navajo hogan leads him to thinking that somehow that old bank robbery is connected to these two people. 

But the murders are not the only crime in Leaphorn's sights. There's the man who tried to run Leaphorn over during a traffic stop. And there's kidnapping of a group of boy scouts who were on a campout. Not to mention that old bank robbery and the disappearance of a helicopter at about the same time. 

An enjoyable mystery despite the  beating that Leaphorn once again takes in his efforts to solve the various crimes. I hope in the later novels the author lets up on abusing Leaphorn and has him solve a crime without being shot, drowned, smothered, burned, falling off a cliff, poisoned, drugged or bitten by animals. 

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.