People of Darkness (1980)

Modern technology meets ancient mythology in Tony Hillerman’s People of Darkness, a novel where Navajo religious mysteries are as central to the plot as the search for uranium. The story introduces Sergeant Jim Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police, an exceptional detective whose investigation into a minor theft at the mansion of immensely wealthy uranium magnate B.J. Vines reopens a thirty-year-old mystery. What begins with a localized theft spirals into an impossible pattern: every survivor of a historic oil-rig explosion has since died of cancer—and a corpse has been stolen from a university research lab. Chee's search leads him directly into the crosshairs of Wolf, a formidable contract killer who prepares his assassinations as carefully as his gourmet meals. As the action accelerates into a high-stakes desert climax, Chee must outmaneuver a deadly predator to uncover a shocking truth.