Skeleton Man takes place in comtemporary time, mostly in the Grand Canyon, a very cool location to say the least, but the legendary Joe Leaphorn has only a small role here and Jim Chee, who functions as the lead investigator, takes almost a secondary role to the competing parties looking for a batch of diamonds lost in a plane crash in the Fifties.

I’m probably not remembering this right, but it seemed to me that past Hillerman books told the story through the eyes of one, maybe two people. This story has a more godlike approach and we spend lots of time observing the behavior and conversation of not very interesting bad guys or a revengeful woman.

I had a hard time caring much about anybody except for Bernie, young policewoman who got herself in a jam here, but we knew Hillerman wasn’t going to let anything bad happen to her because she was about to marry our hero, Jim Chee, so what’s to worry about?

I just couldn’t get interested in this book. Sorry, Tony Hillerman. But thanks for the many other good reads you’ve provided me over the years.