Ghost Medicine (Ella Clah)
The Four Corners area of the American West, particularly the reservations in New Mexico, is Thurlo turf. The spousal writing team has three ongoing series set there, starring, respectively, Sister Agatha, Lee Nez, and Ella Clah. The Ella Clah novels (this is the seventeenth) stand apart from the other series, thanks to the complexity of Ella, a Navajo Police special investigator, who faces down opposing Anglo and Navajo cultures in her work and home life. This time, the discovery of the body of a former Navajo police officer who has undergone ritualistic-looking mutilations leads Ella and her team to suspect that this may be the work of “skinwalkers,” Navajo witches who try to control through intimidation. The retired cop-victim had been working as a private eye, hunting down stolen Navajo artifacts. The skinwalker angle is especially creepy here, with vivid descriptions of the way they leave their calling card of body mutilation at staged scenes. The Thurlos mix in a great deal of knowledge about trafficking in Native American antiquities with a well-constructed investigation steered by a believable and admirable heroine. --Connie Fletcher