Tony Hillerman Books in Order: The Complete Leaphorn & Chee Reading Guide
All 17 novels ranked and reviewed — with grades, reading order, and where to start
My connection to Tony Hillerman goes back further than almost any other author I read. His novels were among the first I ever listened to as audiobooks — back when audiobooks meant cassette tapes. I'd been to southern Utah but never to the Navajo Nation itself, never to the Four Corners, never to Shiprock or Monument Valley, and yet Hillerman's fiction gave me something I've never quite found in another author: a sense of place so exact and so alive that I felt the sagebrush, the open land, the dry desolate emptiness of that high desert. I could feel the dust.
Through his novels I found a genuine love of the Navajo people and their culture. When I've stood at the edge of Anasazi ruins in southern Utah or Colorado, it has always been through the lens of what Hillerman taught me — the way those places are still inhabited by history, by ceremony, by the living tradition of a people. He was a master of something very rare: centering a mystery not just in a place but in a culture, treating that culture with seriousness and depth rather than as atmosphere. He will always be missed.
And he created two of the greatest characters in any genre fiction I've read. Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee belong, in my view, in the pantheon alongside the most memorable detectives in literature. They are completely different men — different philosophies, different relationships with Navajo tradition, different investigative instincts — and that tension between them is part of what makes the series endure.
Where to start: Start with The Blessing Way (Book 1) — it's where Leaphorn begins, and the 1970 setting adds its own texture. If you prefer Chee, you can also start with People of Darkness (Book 4); the series is loosely serialized enough that either works as an entry point. The audiobooks narrated by George Guidall are the definitive format — his feel for the landscape and the characters is exceptional.
The two protagonists
Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn is the elder detective — a pragmatist, a rationalist, a man who approaches Navajo tradition with deep respect but also with skeptical distance. He carries a map covered in pins; he works patterns. He was created first, and Hillerman's editor was right to push him toward center stage.
Officer (later Sergeant) Jim Chee is younger, more spiritually engaged, and is training to become a hataalii — a Navajo singer, a healer. He lives partly inside Navajo ceremonialism in a way Leaphorn doesn't. His investigations are more interior; his cases often hinge on the meaning of ceremony and belief. Where Leaphorn sees patterns in geography, Chee sees patterns in ritual.
The series runs through three distinct phases: three novels featuring Leaphorn alone, three featuring Chee alone, then ten in which they share the stage — sometimes as colleagues, sometimes as near-rivals.
The reading order
1. The Blessing Way (1970)
AThe novel that started everything, and still one of the strongest. Leaphorn isn't yet the main protagonist Hillerman intended — the human lead is an anthropologist — but Leaphorn commands every scene he's in. The 1970 setting registers throughout: how you imagine cars, roads, and the reservation itself all shift a decade or two backward, and it's worth leaning into. A near-perfect introduction to Hillerman's world.
2. Dance Hall of the Dead (1973)
A−Won the Edgar Award for Best Novel — the most prestigious recognition in American crime fiction — and it deserved it. Leaphorn investigates the disappearance of two boys near Zuni territory, and the case turns on the collision between Zuni ceremonial belief and the violence of the outside world. Not perfect, but it's serious, strange, and completely transporting.
3. Listening Woman (1978)
Not yet reviewedThe third Leaphorn solo novel. Leaphorn investigates a murder on the reservation that connects to a Navajo cult and a group of domestic terrorists. Widely considered one of the best pure Leaphorn novels. On my list.
4. People of Darkness (1980)
B+Chee's debut, and he arrives fully formed. He's chasing a stolen box of "worthless" rocks, a string of old murders, and a sense that something darker than greed is at work. Hillerman is always good, and this is a solid, confident entry — even if it's a slight step below the series peaks.
5. The Dark Wind (1982)
A−Chee gets tangled between a drug-running operation, a Hopi windmill saboteur, and a murder on the border between the Navajo and Hopi reservations — a landscape of real, grinding real-world conflict. The setting is everything here. My copy of this felt like something I half-remembered rather than freshly read: I'd seen a version of it before without realizing, and the plot was still good enough to carry even knowing where it was going.
6. The Ghostway (1984)
A−Chee leaves the reservation and goes to Los Angeles, which shouldn't work as well as it does. Watching Chee navigate the city as a deeply out-of-place Navajo man, while still caring intensely about his home, is some of Hillerman's most interesting characterization. Not perfect, but the contrast of settings makes it memorable.
7. Skinwalkers (1986)
B−The first novel to bring both men into the same story, which should have been an event — and it is, conceptually. Someone is shooting at Chee; Leaphorn has three unexplained deaths on reservation land; the cases intersect around Navajo witchcraft. We listened to this driving toward Lake Powell, and it's a fine book, but it's my least favorite of the Hillerman I've read. Narratively it didn't pull me the way the others do. Still worth reading in sequence.
8. A Thief of Time (1988)
A−One of my favorites in the series, and for many readers the high point of the Leaphorn-and-Chee era. An anthropologist vanishes from an Anasazi dig site; pots are being looted from the ruins; the investigation becomes a meditation on time, silence, and what the ancient past means to the living present. The Anasazi ruins are treated as actively sacred — an element that lands differently once you've stood in those canyons yourself.
9. Talking God (1989)
Not yet reviewedLeaphorn and Chee find themselves pulled into a case centered on a Smithsonian exhibit of Native American ceremonial objects — and a plot that reaches from Washington D.C. back to the reservation. Considered one of the most political novels in the series.
10. Coyote Waits (1990)
Not yet reviewedA Navajo officer is murdered, and an elderly Navajo shaman is found nearby, apparently responsible. Chee can't make himself believe it. The case turns on storytelling itself — the Coyote stories, the nature of who tells the truth and why. A fan favorite.
11. Sacred Clowns (1993)
Not yet reviewedA koshare — a Pueblo ceremonial clown — is murdered during a dance. The case spreads across two cultures, two sacred traditions, and the violence that shadows both. Chee and Leaphorn work toward each other from different angles. Often cited as one of the best in the series.
12. The Fallen Man (1996)
A−Leaphorn has retired, but is pulled back by a missing rancher and a skeleton found on Ship Rock — a body that has been there a long time. This is the novel that made me want to see Shiprock in person. The integration of that monument into the plot, the way its presence haunts the landscape of the case, is some of Hillerman's finest location work. The retired-Leaphorn dynamic also adds genuine tension: Chee is now working the official investigation while Leaphorn circles it from the outside.
13. The First Eagle (1998)
Not yet reviewedA Navajo Tribal Police officer goes missing; a biologist studying bubonic plague carriers is found dead in his place. The case involves both men — Leaphorn hired privately, Chee officially. The plague angle gives this one a biological dread that sets it apart from the rest of the series.
14. Hunting Badger (1999)
A−A casino heist, a murdered officer, and armed fugitives hiding in the canyon country of the Colorado Plateau — terrain so remote that the FBI's grid search keeps failing. This one has everything you love in Hillerman: the land doing actual investigative work, the landscape as a character. Good Tony Hillerman novel. Has the things you like.
15. The Wailing Wind (2002)
B+A dead man in a truck, an unsolved older murder, and a legendary lost gold mine that may be worth nothing or everything. Bernadette Manuelito becomes a more present figure here — the character who Anne Hillerman would later center her continuation of the series around. Solid, reliable Hillerman — a B+ is still high company.
16. The Sinister Pig (2003)
Not yet reviewedThe investigation crosses the Mexican border — literally. A body found in the desert leads Chee and Leaphorn toward a pipeline of natural gas and a pipeline of something else. A different scale of corruption than usual for the series.
17. Skeleton Man (2004)
Not yet reviewedHuman remains from a 1956 Grand Canyon plane crash surface decades later, entangled with a diamond inheritance and a Hopi sacred site. One of Hillerman's final novels, and it brings the geography back to its grandest scale.
After Tony Hillerman: Hillerman died in October 2008. His daughter Anne Hillerman has continued the series, centering her novels on Bernadette Manuelito, beginning with Spider Woman's Daughter (2013). The continuation is warmly received by fans of the original series and is worth exploring once you've finished Tony's 17 books.
Grades at a glance
| # | Title | Year | Lead | My Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Blessing Way | 1970 | Leaphorn | A |
| 2 | Dance Hall of the Dead ★ Edgar | 1973 | Leaphorn | A− |
| 3 | Listening Woman | 1978 | Leaphorn | — |
| 4 | People of Darkness | 1980 | Chee | B+ |
| 5 | The Dark Wind | 1982 | Chee | A− |
| 6 | The Ghostway | 1984 | Chee | A− |
| 7 | Skinwalkers | 1986 | Both | B− |
| 8 | A Thief of Time | 1988 | Both | A− |
| 9 | Talking God | 1989 | Both | — |
| 10 | Coyote Waits | 1990 | Both | — |
| 11 | Sacred Clowns | 1993 | Both | — |
| 12 | The Fallen Man | 1996 | Both | A− |
| 13 | The First Eagle | 1998 | Both | — |
| 14 | Hunting Badger | 1999 | Both | A− |
| 15 | The Wailing Wind | 2002 | Both + Bernie | B+ |
| 16 | The Sinister Pig | 2003 | Both + Bernie | — |
| 17 | Skeleton Man | 2004 | Both | — |
Where to start if you're new to Hillerman
Start with The Blessing Way. It introduces the world, the landscape, and Leaphorn — and it's an A. Even though Leaphorn isn't technically the main protagonist in that first novel, he carries the book, and Hillerman's editor was right to push him forward.
If you want to start with Chee instead — and some readers prefer his more interior, spiritually complicated perspective — People of Darkness is a clean standalone entry. You won't be lost without having read books 1–3.
If you absolutely have to start somewhere in the middle, A Thief of Time (Book 8) and The Fallen Man (Book 12) both work as near-standalones and represent the series at its best. But reading them first will spoil earlier beats in the Leaphorn-Chee relationship.
The audiobooks
This is a series that rewards listening. George Guidall narrates most of the Hillerman catalog, and his voice — patient, dry, unhurried — fits the landscape perfectly. The pacing of an audiobook suits Hillerman's prose, which breathes at the speed of the desert. I first came to this series on cassette tapes, and the experience of listening while driving through high-desert landscape is as close as you can get to being in the books.
What to read after Hillerman
If Hillerman's sense of place and character is what drew you in, the closest equivalent I've found is the Inspector Gamache series by Louise Penny — different country, different culture, but the same seriousness about place and the same depth of character development over a long series. I've also found that Craig Johnson's Walt Longmire series (set in Wyoming) hits a similar landscape note, though it's a different register tonally.
For mysteries specifically rooted in Native American culture and landscape, the work of Margaret Coel (Father John O'Malley and Vicky Holden, set on the Wind River Reservation) is the most natural next step. Her books treat their subject with the same respect Hillerman does and are specifically cited by Hillerman fans as the series to read next.
Anne Hillerman's continuation: the Bernie Manuelito series
Tony Hillerman's daughter Anne Hillerman continued the series after his death, beginning with Spider Woman's Daughter in 2013. Her books are set in the same world, involve the same characters, and are written with her father's cooperation in spirit — she had access to his notes and his deep knowledge of the landscape and culture. The shift is that the protagonist moves forward: where Tony's books centered on Leaphorn and Chee, Anne's center on Bernadette Manuelito, the Navajo officer who had become an increasingly important figure by the end of Tony's run.
I haven't read them yet. But I've heard good things, and my mom is a fan — which, for a series this rooted in character and place, is a meaningful endorsement. The reception from Tony Hillerman fans has been genuinely warm, not just polite. I'll add personal grades here as I read them.
| # | Title | Year | My Grade |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Spider Woman's Daughter | 2013 | — |
| 2 | Rock with Wings | 2015 | — |
| 3 | Song of the Lion | 2017 | — |
| 4 | Cave of Bones | 2018 | — |
| 5 | The Tale Teller | 2019 | — |
| 6 | Stargazer | 2021 | — |
| 7 | The Sacred Bridge | 2022 | — |
| 8 | The Way of the Bear | 2023 | — |
| 9 | Lost Birds | 2024 | — |
| 10 | Shadow of the Solstice | 2025 | — |
If you've finished Tony's 17 novels and are deciding whether to continue with Anne's books, the honest answer from readers seems to be: they're not the same, but they're worth it. The voice is different, the center of gravity has shifted, and Bernie is a different kind of protagonist than either Leaphorn or Chee. But the landscape is still there, the culture is treated with the same seriousness, and the characters you've come to know are present. For readers who love this world, that's usually enough.
FAQ
- Do I have to read Tony Hillerman's books in order?
- Not strictly. Each book is largely self-contained as a mystery. But the relationship between Leaphorn and Chee develops across the series, and some emotional beats in the later books land harder if you've been with them since the beginning. Reading in order is worth it.
- How many Tony Hillerman Leaphorn & Chee books are there?
- 17 novels written by Tony Hillerman between 1970 and 2004. After his death in 2008, his daughter Anne Hillerman continued the series, with Bernadette Manuelito as the lead character.
- Which Tony Hillerman book won the Edgar Award?
- Dance Hall of the Dead (1973) won the Edgar Award for Best Novel from the Mystery Writers of America. Hillerman also received the MWA Grand Master Award in 1991.
- What is the TV series Dark Winds based on?
- Dark Winds on AMC is based on the Leaphorn & Chee novels. The show has been praised for its casting and its authentic treatment of Navajo culture, and it's a fine companion to the books — just don't let it replace them.
- Is Hillerman's series appropriate for younger readers?
- Yes, largely. The violence is present but never gratuitous, and the books' treatment of Navajo and Pueblo culture makes them genuinely educational in the best sense. They're the books that made me want to learn, to visit, to understand. I'd give them to a curious teenager without hesitation.