Loaded with e-book extras (not available in the print edition), including Tony Hillerman's running commentary on his work, his series heroes Leaphorn and Chee, and a special profile of the Navajo nation.

Sprawled on a ledge under the peak of Ship Rock mountain for eleven years lies an unknown body, now only bones. At Cabyon de Chelly, three hundred miles across the Navajo reservation, a sniper shoots an old canyon guide who has always walked that pollen path in peace. At his home in Window Rock, Joe Leaphorn, newly retired from the Navajo Tribal Police, connects skeleton and sniper, and remembers an old puzzle he could never solve. At his office in Shiprock, Acting Lieutenant Jim Chee is too busy to take much interest in the case -- until it hits too close to home. Bringing the beauty and mystery of the Southwest to vivid life once again, Tony Hillerman has reunited Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee in an evocative mystery in which the past and the present join forces in a most unholy union.

From where Bill Buchanan sat with his back resting against the rough breccia, he could see the side of Whiteside's head, about three feet away. When John leaned back, Buchanan could see the snowcapped top of Mount Taylor looming over Grants, New Mexico, about eighty miles to the east. Now John was leaning forward, talking.

"This climbing down to climb back up, and climbing up so you can climb back down again," Whiteside said. "That seems like a poor way to get the job done. Maybe it's the only way to get to the summit, but I'll bet we could find a faster way down."

"Relax," Buchanan said. "Be calm. We're supposed to be resting."

They were perched on one of the few relatively flat outcrops of basalt in what climbers of Ship Rock call Rappel Gully. On the way up, it was the launching point for the final hard climb to the summit, a slightly tilted but flat surface of basalt about the size of a desktop and 1,721 feet above the prairie below. If you were going down, it was where you began a shorter but even harder almost vertical climb to reach the slope that led you downward with a fair chance of not killing yourself.

Buchanan, Whiteside, and Jim Stapp had just been to the summit. They had opened the army surplus ammo box that held the Ship Rock climbers' register and signed it, certifying their conquest of one of North America's hard ones. Buchanan was tired. He was thinking that he was getting too old for this.

Whiteside was removing his climbing harness, laying aside the nylon belt and the assortment of pitons, jumars, etriers, and carabiners that make reaching such mountaintops possible.

He did a deep knee bend, touched his toes, and stretched. Buchanan watched, uneasy.

"What are you doing?"

"Nothing," Whiteside said. "Actually, I'm following the instructions of that rock climber's guide you're always threatening to write. I am getting rid of all nonessential weight before making an unprotected traverse."

Buchanan sat up. He played in a poker game in which Whiteside was called "Two-Dollar John" because of his unshakable faith that the dealer would give him the fifth heart if he needed one. Whiteside enjoyed taking risks.

"Traversing what?" Buchanan asked.

"I'm just going to ease over there and take a look." He pointed along the face of the cliff. "Get out there maybe a hundred feet and you can see down under the overhang and into the honeycomb formations. I can't believe there's not some way to rappel right on down."

"You're looking for some way to kill yourself," Buchanan said. "If you're in such a damn hurry to get down, get yourself a parachute."

"Rappelling down is easier than up," Whiteside said. He pointed across the little basin to where Stapp was preparing to begin hauling himself up the basalt wall behind them. "I'll just be a few minutes." He began moving with gingerly care out onto the cliff face.

Buchanan was on his feet. "Come on, John! That's too damn risky."

"Not really," Whiteside said. "I'm just going out far enough to see past the overhang. Just a peek at what it looks like. Is it all this broken-up breccia or is there, maybe, a big old finger of basalt sticking up that we could scramble right on down?"

Tony Hillerman is past president of Mystery Writers of America and has received their Edgar and Grand Master awards. His other honors include the Center for the American Indian's Ambassador Award, the Silver Spur Award for the best novel set in the West, the Navaho Tribe's Special Friend Award, the National Media Award from the American Anthropological Association, the Public Service Award from the U.S. Department of the Interior, the Nero Wolfe Award, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Oklahoma Center for the Book, Honorary Life Membership in the Western Literature Association, and the Grand Prix de Litterature Policiere. In addition to his election to Phi Beta Kappa, Tony Hillerman has been named Doctor of Humane Letters at Arizona State University and at Portland University. He lives with his wife, Marie, in Albuquerque, NM.