"Kirk Mitchell Storyteller." Reprinted from the Seminole Tribune 2007
By Ramona Kiyoshk
Kirk Mitchell is not a Native American, although to read his racy crime-mystery novels, set in the heart of Indian Country, one would neither know nor care. Tony Hillerman may have started the genre --- Indian cops doing Indian things in Indian territory --- but Mitchell has taken it to grand new heights. From policeman to SWAT guy to novelist, Kirk Mitchell’s work includes more than two dozen books on history, fantasy, fiction and more. He has also novelized movies on a contract basis. He draws on his experience working on the reservations in California for background in a series of crime-mysteries involving Native Americans.
I probably would not have ever discovered this writer if a friend had not handed me a tattered, dog-eared novel called Sky Woman Falling, telling me I would love it. I read the back and cynically muttered, “Another wannabe. Everybody wants to be an Indian.”
Fortunately, I was not too put off, and after page one I was hooked.
Sky Woman Falling incorporates the best of
modern police know-how and Native spirituality and current lifestyles. Mitchell masterfully applies what he learned from his work in BIA law enforcement and from the people he worked to protect. His storytelling skills are significant. This novel is set on a reservation in upstate New York and involves the contentious issue of land claims. The late night car chases, the snowy mountain roads, and the stake-outs pull you into a mystifying story of a criminal who has devised a diabolical means of killing people by dropping them out of the sky without use of aircraft or any other visible means. The investigators in Mitchell’s novels are BIA Criminal Investigator Emmett Quanah Parker, Comanche, and FBI Special Agent Anna Turnipseed, Modoc. I gave this poor, coffee-stained, torn paperback to a friend who gave it to a friend who … you get the idea.
Cry Dance was the first in the crime-mystery series featuring Bureau of Indian Affairs Investigator Emmett Quanah Parker and FBI Special Agent Anna Turnipseed. A brutally murdered and mutilated female corpse is discovered in a remote corner of the Grand Canyon, in the traditional home of the Havasupai Nation. Were the mutilations an attempt to conceal the victim’s identity or was this a murder of passion by an enraged jealous lover? With Emmett on the outside and Anna working undercover, they soon unearth evidence of adultery, bribery, and corruption. Emmett suspects they are being led into a killer's trap. Too late, our hero realizes Anna has become the bait in a desperate battle of wits and cunning in which Parker himself is the prize quarry. Oh, my!
In The Ancient Ones, Parker and Turnipseed find themselves on an Oregon reservation where the discovery of an ancient skeleton by an illegal fossil hunter threatens to pit traditionalists against scientists. When it is announced that the 14,000-year-old bones are Caucasian, shattering long-held beliefs that Native Americans were the first inhabitants, a young anthropologist disappears and the fossil hunter is found brutally killed and mutilated. To complicate things even more, Parker and Anna begin stirring up some heat of their own. Those stake-outs can get a cop in trouble.
Spirit Sickness takes the reader to Hillerman country. One almost expects Joe Chin to make an appearance. A diabolical killer is on the loose, leaving a trail of blood and bodies across the quiet Navajo canyons. This fiend knows the ways of the people. Parker and Turnipseed struggle to separate their own loyalties to tradition and to their law enforcement duties. This book offers a chill a minute.
In Dance of the Thunder Dogs, Parker finds himself back home in Oklahoma with his family and friends. After thirteen years on the force, he is estranged from Anna and is painfully recovering from surgery on a wound.
The Thunder Dogs, what the Comanche called horses, is a society created to honor the accomplished men of the tribe. They are drumming and offering an honor dance for their returning hero.
When Parker is invited to join the elite Thunder Dogs, he has to decide where his commitment lies: to his people or to his role in law enforcement. This novel is the last in the series, so far.
Please don’t bail, Emmett.
