THE LATE ARRIVAL OF THE NATIVE AMERICAN DETECTIVE

An Indian sheriff!" The commonness of this sort of badfaith story cobbling is why it is surprising to me that the Native American detective seems to be a rather late invention in the mystery and really only becomes a distinctive item on bookstore shelves after Tony Hillerman's The Blessing Way (1970) and Dance Hall of the Dead (1973), a multiple award winner. Of Cherokee, Choctaw, and Irish ancestry, eminent Steinbeck and Native American literature scholar Louis Owens also tried his hand at crime fiction with, among others, The Sharpest Sight (1992, which won the French Roman Noir award) and Nightland (1996, which won the American Book Award). Some point to the first Canadian detective novel called November Joe: Detective of the Woods (1913), by big-game hunter and Great War sniper H. Hesketh-Prichard. Since November Joe's "Indianness" is meaningless to the story, several sources say that the earliest may be as late as The Disappearance of Archibald Forsyth, published in 1933, the same year that Tonto first began his adventures on radio with the Lone Ranger. Palmyra, Virginia J. Madison Davis is the author of eight mystery novels, including The Murder of Frau Schütz, an Edgar nominee, and Law and Order: Dead Line.