The Mysterious West - Softcover

Hillerman, Tony

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0061092622 ISBN 13: 9780061092626

Publisher: HarperTorch, 1995

Synopsis

Edited by Tony Hillerman, the Southwest's foremost suspense writer, this first-ever collection of mystery stories set in the West contains 20 original entries by such luminary mystery writers as Marcia Muller, Susan Dunlap, and Robert Campbell.

About this title

About the Author:

TONY HILLERMAN was a former 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 Friends of the Dineh award. A native of Oklahoma, Tony Hillerman lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico, until his death in 2008.

From Library Journal:

Morris (American literature, Pennsylvania State Univ., Erie) conducted 15 interviews between 1988 and 1992 of authors writing primarily of the American West. The interviewees are all "postmodernist" and "postregionalist" in their perspectives, sharing an ambiguous and ambivalent attitude toward place and the mythos that represents it. Some of these writers still look to the past but reinterpret it, such as Ron Hansen, Molly Gloss, and Ivan Doig; others, like William Kittredge, seek to demythologize it. Among the writers interviewed are several female voices (Gloss, Gretel Ehrlich, and Mary Clearman Blew), who offer a new vision of the roles played by women in shaping the American West. All of them yield valuable insights into what direction the new Western literary tradition seems to be headed. Novelist Hillerman's volume, in contrast, is far less weighty. It contains 20 short stories, primarily mystery and detective fiction, such as Marcia Muller's "Forbidden Things" and Karen Kijewski's "Tule Fog," interspersed with an occasional fantastical tale. The fictional landscapes here range from the desolation, silence, and danger of Death Valley, and the small, dying towns of southern Colorado to the sophisticated originality and zaniness of Berkekey, California. Across these pages march university protesters, ranch hands, and Yurok Indians. Together, they give life to a multifaceted landscape that is currently undergoing redefinition, as Morris's volume of interviews amply demonstrates. There is no overlap between the writers in these two works. For this reason, owning both works would give a novice reader of Western literature a useful variety. For public library collections.
Marie L. Lally, Alabama Sch. of Mathematics & Science, Mobile
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperTorch
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0061092622
• ISBN 13: 9780061092626
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 464