Preview of The First Eagle Summary:

The novel's central theme as well as its genre-specific device is detection, the discovery of answers to deep, puzzling, and important questions. But it is not merely the device with which to develop a formulaic "mystery" novel. Because it stems from a powerful and compelling human characteristic, the desire to learn, to solve a problem, to reach a goal, it constitutes a powerful thematic core of the novel. It is enacted in three modes that interweave effectively to create an effective and compelling structure. They are, first, the scientific search to discover ways to defeat the new supermicrobes that literally threaten all mankind; second, the police search for the murderer of Officer Kinsman and for the missing Catherine Pollard; and third, the search by both Chee and Leaphorn for love and companionship.

The first of these clustered "detection" themes in The First Eagle involves the search by "the...