Odd.
The Fly on the Wall. A
book so unlike Tony Hillerman's other novels, all but one being his
celebrated Navajo Tribal Police series, it seems an anomaly. A fly in
the ointment, one might say, cheap pun though it be.
Mystery
fans enamored of the legend-hued tales featuring Joe Leaphorn and Jim
Chee indeed are apt to overlook an early one about a newspaper
reporter, suspecting perhaps it was a false start, the clumsy effort
of a novice before he hit his stride.
In
fact Hillerman's false-start novel--the clumsy one, in his own
estimation—turned out to be the first in the series that ultimately
brought him fame. The
Fly on the Wall came
out in 1971, a year after
The Blessing Way. Yet
it was the Indian culture that fascinated him. Wanting to “get it
right,” he followed Fly
with Dance
Hall of the Dead.
He knew now he was hooked, and went on to write sixteen more
featuring the same milieu and cast. His burgeoning readership got
hooked in the process.
