White Thunder (Ella Clah Series) FROM OUR EDITORS
The Barnes & Noble Review
In this suspenseful tale by the popular southwestern writing team of Aimﾽe and David Thurlo, Navajo cop Ella Clah faces a difficult challenge -- mending fences between her former FBI colleagues and the people she's now sworn to protect. As she searches for a missing FBI agent who disappeared on the reservation after interrupting a traditional Navajo healing ceremony, Ella's investigation leads down several disturbing pathsﾽwith remarkably few clues to mark the way. The least troubling possibility is that the missing man was targeted solely because of the case he was investigating -- a risk that's an unfortunately routine part of the job. But Ella cannot deny the very real possibility that the hataalii whose ritual was defiled might have sought to punish the inexperienced agent or that other traditionalists might have done so, with potentially disastrous results for the tribe. Unfortunately, clearing the medicine man forces Ella to pursue an equally unsettling trail of evidence that leads back to the Bureau and throws suspicion on her old colleague Agent Blalockﾽ. With time running out for the missing man, and allies few and far between, Ella uses investigative skills honed in both of her worlds as she follows the ever more perilous path to justice. Sue Stone
FROM THE PUBLISHER
FBI area supervisor Simmons asks the Navajo Tribal Police to help locate Andrew Thomas, a federal agent who disappeared after interrupting a Navajo ritual being performed by a group of medicine men or hataaliis. Simmons voices his displeasure when Special Investigator Ella Clah is assigned to the case; he believes that Ella became an FBI agent, more than a decade earlier, due to affirmative action-and that she left because the job was too tough for her.
Ella ignores Simmons' pettiness, knowing that finding the missing man is the highest priority. She won't allow family issues to get in the way, so she asks her daughter's father to become a full-time parent for the duration of her investigation. She even questions her brother, a hataalii himself, about Agent Thomas. Could a medicine man have punished Thomas for disturbing the Sing?
Startlingly, Ella receives a disturbing cell phone call that seems to be from Thomas himself. He's trapped in a dark place, lost and hurt. Ella realizes that time is running out.
With the hataaliis cleared, Ella follows up on Thomas's investigation into Social Security fraud. She is disturbed to see evidence that seems to point to her old friend and Thomas's immediate superior, FBI agent Blalock. Could Blalock steal money and assault one of his own men? Ella can't believe it.
The fraud trail leads through a maze of paperwork, banks, government offices, mortuaries, and into the Navajos' most dearly held-beliefs about death. Only by finding the truth-and fast-will Ella be able to save Andrew Thomas.
FROM THE CRITICS
Kirkus Reviews
An FBI agent last seen intruding on a Navajo healing ceremony goes missing. Confiding in no one at the Bureau, inexperienced Agent Andy Thomas enters the Navajo Reservation and confronts someone participating in a sacred cleansing ritual. Only he knows who and why. When he disappears, his supervisor, Agent Simmons, must rely on tribal special investigator Ella Clah (Plant Them Deep, 2003, etc.) to find him before he falls victim to thirst or worse in the parched arroyos and abandoned mineshafts on the rez. But someone doesn't want Ella to find Agent Thomas. Even with the help of Bruce "Teeny" Little, a former tribal cop turned p.i.; her cop cousin Justine; and her brother Clifford, a medicine man himself, it takes her the better part of two days to discover the medicine man who performed the ceremony and Melvin Rainwater, his patient. Instead of Thomas, she finds only a dismembered body with his FBI badge. A Navajo widow's complaints about missing Social Security checks lead Ella to Rainwater's boss, a mortuary owner, and a get-rich-quick scheme abetted by a dirty FBI honcho. Guns blaze, car suspensions crack, phones are tapped, Navajo death taboos are flagrantly disregarded, and Agent Thomas is kidnapped and used as a bargaining chip before finally being rescued. Sluggish prose and stilted dialogue, enlivened every now and then with a really interesting nugget about Navajo customs.
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