Hillerman's roots in fiction go back first of all to the front porch story-telling oral tradition of Sacred Heart, Oklahoma, then, of course, to the hard-boiled mystery writers such as Eric Ambler, Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald, and Ed McBain. He credits Graham Greene's The Third Man and The Comedians for stirring one's urge to try to write because he is such a master of his craft. He admires George V. Higgins, the "Brueghel of Dialogue" (Talking Mysteries, 27), and he finds occasional recourse to E. B. White or the younger Hemingway helpful when he needs to eliminate adverbs and adjectives. And there's also more than a hint of the English cozy tradition in his work. After all, despite its huge geographic area, the Navajo Reservation where everyone seems related in one way or another resembles a small English village where everyone knows everyone's business—and bloodlines...