Spirit Sickness - Hardcover

Mitchell, Kirk

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0553108948 ISBN 13: 9780553108941

Publisher: Bantam, 2000

Synopsis

From the author of Cry Dance comes a new suspense thriller in the tradition of Tony Hillerman and Joseph Wambaugh.  Spirit Sickness reunites Bureau of Indian Affairs Criminal Investigator Emmett Quanah Parker and FBI Special Agent Anna Turnipseed, two Native American cops torn between their heritage and the law.

A burned-out police cruiser, gutted by fire in a remote part of the Navajo reservation, bears witness to a horrific crime.  Inside are the bodies of a tribal patrolman and his wife.  Even more chilling, the bodies were left to greet death in the traditional Navajo way:  the killer has smashed a window to let loose the chindis, the spirits of the dead.

As BIA Investigator Emmett Quanah Parker knows, a cop's murder is never simple, raising countless questions and suspicions.  Parker and FBI Special Agent Anna Turnipseed must make their way through a tangle of lies and misdirection, sift through an assortment of suspects, and work around the sexual tension between them that neither can hide nor ignore.  Then another murder complicates the case even more, exploding their investigation into an unimaginable realm.

The latest killing makes it clear that an inhumanly cunning mind is at work, weaving personal madness with a complex mix of Navajo mythology and superstition.  Both Parker, a Comanche, and Turnipseed, a Modoc, are well acquainted with the eerie shadowland between native myth and modern homicide investigation.  But now they will have to tear down the barriers they have constructed to separate heritage from professional duties.  They must embrace the attitudes they have long submerged under cold rationalism, and hope to touch minds with a murderer who has created his own reality-and with it the need to kill and kill again.

Following a serpentine trail through Navajo gangs and methamphetamine runners, Parker and Turnipseed are on the scent of a cold and ancient evil.  And they must find it before a killer erupts in a final outburst of blood fury and madness.

About this title

Review

Spirit Sickness marks the return of Bureau of Indian Affairs investigator Emmett Quanah Parker, a Comanche, and FBI special agent Anna Turnipseed, a Modoc, who first pooled their investigative talents in Cry Dance. Anna is recovering from a vicious attack and dreads returning to the field; Emmett, however, will do whatever he can to lure her back to active duty. When the bodies of tribal patrolman Bert Knoki and his wife are found in a fire-gutted police cruiser in a remote wash on the Navajo reservation, Emmett seizes the opportunity to request Anna's help. As the investigation unfolds, the agents find themselves questioning the dead cop's integrity, delving into a gritty world of poverty and prostitution (just what was Knoki doing visiting a Utah cult in the company of a hooker?), and confronting the eerie legacy of Navajo myth.

That myth centers around the figure of the Gila Monster, said to cure sickness with his trembling paw and to be charged with redeeming the sins of the first Indians by destroying them. Emmett and Anna, who have long sublimated their traditional upbringing to a more rational modernism, must struggle with a madman who has woven his insanity into the myth of the Gila Monster, creating his own reality--and his own very real victims.

The novel is workmanlike, rather than inspired. Although press releases have touted Kirk Mitchell as a threat to Tony Hillerman's supremacy in rendering the lives, secrets, and crimes of the Native American Southwest, Mitchell has yet to approach Hillerman's delicacy of touch and effortless integration of native culture into crime narratives. Mitchell's references to Navajo myth seem ponderous, distant, and irrelevant to the unfolding action. The same complaint might be made of the onerous distraction that is the subplot of romantic attraction between Parker and Turnipseed. If the reader is utterly unable to detect any hint of sexual tension between the two, one wonders why they spend so much energy--and so many pages--fretting about it. --Kelly Flynn

From the Back Cover

Praise for Kirk Mitchell and Cry Dance:

"If Mr. Mitchell was as good a policeman as he is a writer, there must not have been a criminal standing when he retired."
--The Washington Times

"Tony Hillerman, watch your back.... Mitchell knows his turf and delivers a savory whodunit without remorse."
-People

"Plenty of strenuous treks through rugged terrain... What a great guy to keep around."
--The New York Times Book Review

"Nail-bitingly intense... A breathless page-turner... with memorable Native American myths and an outdoorsman's respect for the Southwest's brutal beauty."
--Kirkus Reviews

"A taut thriller...Parker and Turnipseed make a memorable literary pair."
--Publishers Weekly

"Mitchell's Southwest is as hauntingly beautiful and culturally complex as the real thing."
--Library Journal

"Mitchell's voice is original, and his understanding of and compassion for Indian societies is evident on every page.... A fast-paced, twisting plot grabs you on the first page and doesn't let go until the end.... [Kirk Mitchell] is one of the best new writers to arrive on the scene in a good long while."
--Jean Hager, author of Masked Dancers

About this edition

• Publisher: Bantam
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0553108948
• ISBN 13: 9780553108941
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 368