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10 books about Women Sleuths
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The American Café
Sara Sue Hoklotubbe
University of Arizona Press, 2011
Library of Congress PS3608.O4828A44 2011 | Dewey Decimal 813.6
2012 WILLA Literary Award Winner: Best Original Softcover Fiction
When Sadie Walela decides to pursue her childhood dream of owning a restaurant, she has no idea that murder will be on the menu.
In this second book in the Sadie Walela series, set in the heart of the Cherokee Nation, Sadie discovers life as an entrepreneur is not as easy as she anticipated. On her first day, she is threatened by the town’s resident "crazy" woman and the former owner of the American Café turns up dead, engulfing the café—and Sadie herself—in a cloud of suspicion and unanswered questions.
Drawing on the intuition and perseverance of her Cherokee ancestry, Sadie is determined to get some answers when an old friend unexpectedly turns up to lend a hand. A diverse cast of characters—including a mysterious Creek Indian, a corrupt police chief, an angry Marine home from Iraq, and the victim’s grieving sister and alcoholic niece—all come together to create a multilayered story of denial and deceit.
While striving to untangle relationships and old family secrets, Sadie ends up unraveling far more than a murder.
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Betrayal at the Buffalo Ranch
Sara Sue Hoklotubbe
University of Arizona Press, 2018
Library of Congress PS3608.O4828B48 2018 | Dewey Decimal 813.6
When Sadie Walela learns that her new neighbor in Cherokee Country, Angus Clyborn’s Buffalo Ranch, offers rich customers a chance to kill buffalo for fun, she is horrified. No good can surely come from this. It doesn’t, and murder soon follows.
Even though Deputy Sheriff Lance Smith, Sadie’s love interest, suspects a link to the Buffalo Ranch, he can find little evidence to make an arrest. And when a rare white buffalo calf is born on the ranch and immediately disappears, Sadie’s instincts tell her something is wrong—and she sets out to prove it. Her suspicions—and fears of more violence—escalate when a former schoolmate returns to Oklahoma to visit her ailing father and finds employment at the ranch. Will she be the next victim?
Drawn deeper and deeper into danger, Sadie uncovers an unparalleled web of greed and corruption. It will take all of her investigative skill to set things straight—assuming she and her wolfdog can stay alive long enough to succeed.
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Death Before Compline: Short Stories by Sharan Newman
Sharan Newman
Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2012
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Death of a Department Chair: A Novel
Lynn C. Miller
University of Wisconsin Press, 2006
Library of Congress PS3613.I544D34 2006 | Dewey Decimal 813.6
In Death of a Department Chair, protagonist Miriam Held recounts the events of the previous fall when she was suspected of killing Isabel Vittorio, the chair of her department and her former lover. The controversial and contrary Vittorio was, at the time of her death, attempting to block the hire of a brilliant African American female professor. Already under siege for her attempts to increase diversity on campus, Miriam is forced to defend her reputation and her life. As she searches for the truth, Miriam amasses evidence that leaves few friends and colleagues free from suspicion. Both a classic whodunit and a witty satire, Death of a Department Chair dramatizes how communities can create the very climate of mistrust and paranoia that victimizes them.
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Deception on All Accounts
Sara Sue Hoklotubbe
University of Arizona Press, 2003
Library of Congress PS3608.O4828D43 2003 | Dewey Decimal 813.6
Is murder always a simple transaction? Don't bank on it.
Sadie Walela's life is about to be turned upside down.
One morning Sadie unlocks the door at the Mercury Savings Bank and confronts a robber who's been lying in wait for her and her fellow employees. He flees after stealing money and killing her coworker. When a whirlwind of events leaves Sadie herself under suspicion, she sets out to clear her name.
This banker turned sleuth is suddenly plunged into an unfamiliar world in which people are not always as they appear—not her employer, not the homeless man she's befriended, not the police officer who takes an interest in the case, not the man she falls in love with. And, as she's beginning to imagine, not even herself.
Sadie is a blue-eyed Cherokee living in northeastern Oklahoma, a half-blood who finds she sometimes has to adapt to get by in the white man's world. As she faces adversity at each bend in the road, she adapts and moves forward, much as her father's ancestors did. But as she comes to term with murder, romance, and her hopes for a career, Sadie finds deception on all accounts.
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The Hatak Witches
Devon A. Mihesuah
University of Arizona Press, 2021
Library of Congress PS3563.I371535H38 2021 | Dewey Decimal 813.6
After a security guard is found dead and another wounded at the Children’s Museum of Science and History in Norman, Oklahoma, Detective Monique Blue Hawk and her partner Chris Pierson are summoned to investigate. They find no fingerprints, no footprints, and no obvious means to enter the locked building.
Monique discovers that a portion of an ancient and deformed skeleton had also been stolen from the neglected museum archives. Her uncle, the spiritual leader Leroy Bear Red Ears, concludes that the stolen remains are those of Hatak haksi, a witch and the matriarch of the Crow family, a group of shape-shifting Choctaws who plan to reestablish themselves as the powerful creatures they were when the tribe lived in Mississippi. Monique, Leroy, and Chris must stop the Crows, but to their dread, the entities have retreated to the dark and treacherous hollow in the center of Chalakwa Ranch. The murderous shape-shifters believe the enormous wild hogs, poisonous snakes, and other creatures of the hollow might form an adequate defense for Hatak haksi.
But what no one counts on is the unexpected appearance and power of the Old Ones who guard the lands of the Choctaw afterlife. Blending tribal beliefs and myths into a modern context, The Hatak Witches continues the storyline of Choctaw cosmology and cultural survival that are prominent in Devon A. Mihesuah’s award-winning novel, The Roads of My Relations.
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Insinuendo: Murder in the Museum
Miriam Clavir
Bayeux Arts, 2012
Library of Congress PR9199.4.C553I58 2012
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The Painter's Craft
Susan Statham
Bayeux Arts, 2011
Library of Congress PR9199.4.S7239P35 2011
A mystery set around an artist’s studio in Toronto.
A Toronto artist finds herself in the unlikely role of amateur sleuth as she sets about unraveling the strange death of her mentor, a renowned artist, through the tangle of a working art studio and the legacies left behind by the murdered artist’s love of mythology and Shakespeare.
“A triple treat for mystery lovers! There’s the murder investigation of a wonderful
artist, his unique legacies, each requiring a knowledge of mythology and
in the artist’s studio we discover how paintings are made . . .”
—Ted Wood, novelist
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The Red Bird All-Indian Traveling Band
Frances Washburn
University of Arizona Press, 2014
Library of Congress PS3623.A8673R43 2014 | Dewey Decimal 813.6
Opening July 4, 1969, on the Pine Ridge Reservation, The Red Bird All-Indian Traveling Band begins with a raucous Fourth of July gig that abruptly ends with the Red Birds ducking out of the performance in a hilarious hail of beer bottles. By the end of the evening, community member Buffalo Ames is dead, presumed to be murdered, just outside the bar. Sissy Roberts, the band’s singer and the “best female guitar picker on the rez,” is reluctantly drawn into the ensuing investigation by an FBI agent who discovers Sissy’s knack for hearing other people’s secrets.
The Red Bird All-Indian Traveling Band is part mystery, part community chronicle. Shaped by a cast of skillfully drawn characters, all of whom at one time or another are potential suspects, at the core of the story is smart and compassionate Sissy. Four years past high school, Sissy’s wry humor punctuates descriptions of reservation life as she learns more about Ames’s potential killer, and as she embarks on a personal search for ways to buck expectations and leave rural South Dakota to attend college.
Ames’s death is just an example of the undercurrents of violence and passions that run through this fast-moving novel of singing, loving, and fighting. Following Sissy as she unravels the mystery of both Buffalo Ames’s death and her own future, The Red Bird All-Indian Traveling Band is the story of Indian Country on the verge of historic change and a woman unwilling to let change pass her by.
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Sinking Suspicions
Sara Sue Hoklotubbe
University of Arizona Press, 2014
Library of Congress PS3608.O4828S27 2014 | Dewey Decimal 813.6
Suspicions run high when murder mixes with identity theft in the latest installment of the popular Sadie Walela mystery series set in Cherokee Country. No sooner does Sadie embark on an unexpected business trip to the beautiful island of Maui when her long-time neighbor, Buck Skinner, a full-blood Cherokee and World War II veteran, goes missing and becomes the prime suspect in the murder of a petty identity thief.
Iconic lawman Lance Smith joins a community-wide search, but Buck is nowhere to be found. As evidence mounts against her old friend, Sadie rushes to return home to help—only to be delayed by an island-wide earthquake and her own sinking suspicions.
A diverse cast of characters weave together a breathless story of murder, thievery, and the toll of war on the human spirit. In her effort to restore balance to her neighbor’s life, Sadie not only uncovers the truth, but unravels much more than a murder.
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