SOURCE: Porsche, Michael. “Journey into the Past: Tony Hillerman's A Thief of Time.” Amerikastudien 39, no. 2 (1994): 183-95.

In the following essay, Porsche focuses on A Thief of Time, arguing that the book fulfills the reader's desire for harmony and order through the development of characters who must come to terms with the past in order to restore balance to their world.

No contemporary American writer since William Eastlake has made the landscape of the American Southwest as dominating a factor of his work as has Tony Hillerman. His series of mysteries—so far ten Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee adventures have been published—usually take place on the homeland of the Navajo Nation and adjacent tribal reservations in northern New Mexico. This area, which is almost as big as the New England states taken together, is today sparsely populated by about 200,000 Navajos. The region also presents a jurisdictional puzzle because...