The Ghostway

The Ghostway is the sixth crime fiction novel in the Joe Leaphorn / Jim Chee Navajo Tribal Police series by Tony Hillerman. It was first published in 1984 and features Jim Chee. A gunfight at a laundromat in Shiprock NM brings Los Angeles problems to the Navajo reservation. The novel was reviewed positively at its publication. "The tension between the Navajo way-of-life and the tempting white-world outside. . . is central and emphatic" in this novel. The central character "Chee is developed to greater depth than before", though that reviewer felt that the three novels featuring Leaphorn (first three in this series) were more powerful. Another called this novel choice reading. Another review found that the story "moves alertly along" and is "one of the best in the series."