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Former FBI agent, now special investigator with the Navajo Police, Ella Clah knows it's her police training, not the special gift of sensing she's supposed to have inherited from her clan ancestors, that accounts for her unease when troubling things begin happening on the reservation. Lab reports on pregnant women have been stolen from the health clinic, a Navajo guard at the LabKote factory has been murdered, and two native leaders have been kidnapped. The evidence points toward an activist Indian group known as the Fierce Ones, who have been protesting the deal that leaders made with the medical supply company that's on their land. Tensions are running high between the traditionalists and the moderns, the natives who want a return to the old ways and those who embrace the white man's technology to increase their crop yields and improve their brood animals. Not only is Ella stunned to learn that among the masked Fierce Ones is her beloved brother, a healer, but she's just discovered she's pregnant, by a tribal lawyer whose clan has been at odds with her own since the days of their ancestors.
This latest in the increasingly popular Ella Clah series (Death Walker, Bad Medicine, Enemy Way) packs enough action into one slim novel to satisfy readers used to the more cerebral novels of Tony Hillerman and others writing crime fiction featuring Native American heroes. Like them, the Thurlos put a lot of Indian lore into their books and focus on characters who struggle to live in two cultures but are never fully embraced by either. Ella Clah is a thoroughly modern career woman, but her loyalty to her heritage runs strong and deep, making for a richly explicated interior life that is more fully realized by the Thurlos than many of their peers in the genre. If you haven't met Ella before, her newest adventure will have you scrambling for her previous ones. This deft, fast-paced read pulses with danger and excitement on every page. --Jane Adams
From School Library Journal
YA-When Traditionalists begin protesting against a factory on the Navajo Reservation that produces germ-free equipment for medical labs, more problems surface, all pointing toward LabKote. The protests stem from animal deaths traced to the fairgrounds adjacent to the factory, which suggest that some sort of hazardous environmental substance has leaked out. Then two people die mysteriously, several more are kidnapped, and three attempts are made to kill Ella Clah, the Navajo Police Special Investigator assigned to the case. She begins to fit the pieces together, discovering a chilling scenario of impending destruction devised by pathologically evil minds. Focusing on LabKote and its mysterious goings-on, the authors build a strong plot filled with moments of action and intrigue, and include enough basic scientific and forensic evidence to educate readers without overwhelming them. At the same time, the various plot elements subtly weave details of Navajo ethics and culture into the story. Clans and their interrelationships become a priority focus for understanding the complex social system of the Navajo, Ella's status, and that of her unborn baby. An enticing mystery built on a frighteningly realistic scenario.Pam Johnson, Fairfax County Public Library, VA Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Navajo Police Inspector Ella Clah (Blackening Song) returns in her fifth adventure, unexpectedly pregnant and all the more resolute for it as she and her cousin and assistant, Justine Goodluck, investigate a suspicious suicide at LabKote, an Anglo-owned lab supplies plant on the Rez. When a break-in at the local clinic seems to target the records of pregnant Navajo women, Ella feels the threat personally, and tension increases between the so-called traditionalists of the tribe and modern Navajos. Things turn even more sinister as two tribal officials are kidnapped, and Ella must remain centered amidst several clashing dualities: her law-enforcement training and Navajo spirituality; the baby's father and other Navajo men friends; and respect for her traditionalist medicine-man brother and her own choices as a strong, soon-to-be-single mom. Despite some stilted dialog and chase scenes that stretch credulity, this is a good choice where Hillerman fans abound. For all public libraries.-Susan A. Zappia, Paradise Valley Community Coll., Phoenix Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
Weird things are happening on Special Investigator Ella Clah's Navajo reservationto livestock and then, frighteningly, to people. The widening rift between the old and the new, between Navajo traditionalists and Navajo modernists, shows every sign of becoming explosive. Ella, with sympathies forand aversions toboth camps, is caught as usual between them. Two murders, two kidnapings, a break-in at the health clinic, to say nothing of the bizarre treatment dealt out to certain prize-winning animals at the Agricultural Society show, have all intensified the difficulty of keeping the reservations peace. Not that Ella has ever had much peace herself. ``L.A. woman,'' her enemies persist in calling her, though her reservation roots go deep, and it's been a good long while since she wrote finis to her wanderings outside. Even her mother, the tribal elder, and her brother, the medicine man, sometimes behave as if they think shes an outsider. But Ella can cope with all that. And she can cope with the cop on her staff who has no idea what being a cop entails, not to mention the two men in love with her with whom she's not in love. It's the mysterious, perhaps community-threatening, activity going on at nearby LabKote, the giant anglo hospital supplier, that has her slightly off-balance. That, and being pregnant. As always (Enemy Way, 1998, etc.), the Thurlos bring the reservation to lifeperhaps even more convincingly than Tony Hillerman does. It's the Hillerman way with character complexity and his storytelling savvy that are missing here. -- Copyright ©2000, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
"Mystery readers who like their murders solved by applied intelligence will love Ella Clah." --Tony Hillerman
Review
"Mystery readers who like their murders solved by applied intelligence will love Ella Clah." --Tony Hillerman
Book Description
Once and FBI agent, Ella Clah is now a Special Investigator with the Navajo Police. She walks a tightrope between the Navajo and white worlds, fully accepted by neither but needed by both. Ella's brother, Clifford, a hataali or medicine man, says that her investigative skills are a gift from the spirits who guard and guide the Dineh, but Ella insists it's her FBI training that has honed her instincts.
Ella's life is about to change in ways she can barely begin to imagine--she is newly pregnant, and though she knows who the father is, she will not marry him. In Navajo society, her child will be of her clan, and will be accepted by her family, no matter what--but how can she stay a police officer, exposing herself and her unborn child to terrible danger day after day?
Given her current caseload, it's hard for Ella to put off making a final decision about her career. There's a near-riot at LabKote, a factory on the Reservation that produces high-quality vessels for medical labs. The Fierce Ones, an activist group of Navajo, are insisting that more native workers be hired by the firm--including a Navajo replacement for a manager recently found dead in his car, an apparent suicide. A sniper shoots at Ella as she drives to another crime scene--the home of State Senator James Yellowhair, who has been kidnapped.
Feuding between traditionalist and modernist elements in the Navajo nation heats up with sabotage, vandalism, and murder, spurred by a rise in birth defects among the Dineh's livestock and rustling of sheep and cattle. Ella's personal concerns mount when officers investigating a break-in at the health clinic discover that the records of several pregnant women--including Ella--are missing. Then one of the pregnant women is murdered....
About the Author
Aimée and David Thurlo have been married for more than thirty years and have been writing novels together for nearly that long, in a variety of genres including romance, young adult, and mystery. They have three ongoing mystery series, the Sister Agatha series, starring a cloistered nun, the Lee Nez series, featuring a Navajo vampire who teams up with a female FBI agent to fight crimes that have elements of the supernatural, and their flagship series, the critically-acclaimed Ella Clah novels. Several Ella Clah novels, including Tracking Bear, Red Mesa, and Shooting Chant, have received starred reviews from Booklist.
David Thurlo was raised on the Navajo Indian Reservation and later taught school in Shiprock, also on the Rez. Aimée, a native of Havana, Cuba, has lived in New Mexico for more than thirty years. The Thurlos share their home with dogs, horses, and various pet rodents. They have written more than fifty novels which have been published in more than twenty countries.
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