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Tony Hillerman "created the American Indian policier," according to critic Herbert Mitgang in the New York Times. Hillerman also "breaks out of the detective genre," as Daniel K. Muhlestein noted in the Dictionary of Literary Biography. "He is a writer of police procedurals who is less concerned with the identity of his villains than with their motivation." Muhlestein further commented, "Most mystery writers begin with plot. Hillerman begins with setting." Setting, for Hillerman, is nine times out of ten the sprawling, arid, high plateau of the Southwest: the Four Corners region of Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico that comprises Navajo country. Into this vast empty space, Hillerman sets his two protagonists, Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn, detectives with the Navajo Tribal Police who solve crimes using the most modern police methods as well as the most traditional of Navajo beliefs: a sense of hozro, or harmony. Hillerman has written a dozen-plus Leaphorn-Chee mysteries, books that have garnered him awards ranging from the Mystery Writers of America to the Navajo Tribal Council's commendation to France's esteemed Grand Prix de Littérature Policière.
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