The Eagle Catcher (A Wind River Mystery Book 1)

I happened upon through one of my daily Kindle e-mails, and being a huge fan of Tony Hillerman, I thought it might be interesting. Margaret Coel does a great job painting the culture of the Arapaho People and the reservation they call home, and the mystery surrounding the deaths of two tribal leaders was intriguing enough to keep me reading. Admittedly, I did find Father John to be a bit clinched, and perhaps too flawed - a recovering alcoholic Irish Catholic priest from Boston who is also clearly attracted to the Arapaho lawyer, Vicky (herself a victim of domestic abuse), and seldom dresses like a priest except when absolutely necessary. Her other characters are somewhat formulary as well: The rich bigoted rancher with political ambitions; as mentioned before, the Native lawyer, divorced from her abusive husband and estranged from her children; the brilliant and ambitious Arapaho college student as the prime murder suspect; a clueless FBI agent. But I did enjoy this book enough to give the second one a try.

I decided to try this because I enjoyed Hillerman books. The setting and characters just appeal to me. I'm glad I found this, for now I have a new series to follow. The idea of getting to know these new characters is great! That Coel has brought some characters into play that will delve into mysteries from very different perspectives is wonderful. The respect for the people of all cultures is apparent. Descriptions of the setting are beautiful. So, I will look forward to watching these characters grow!

After reading one of her later books, I decided to go back to the beginning of this series and read Coel's debut novel. If you enjoy reading Tony or Anne Hillerman or C.J. Box you will enjoy Margaret Coel's Wind River series set on the Wind River Reservation in contemporary Wyoming.Father John O'Malley is a Jesuit priest on the reservation working with the Arapaho and Shoshone tribes at the mission. When Father John discovers his friend and tribal councilman murdered in his teepee as the powwow is beginning, he becomes involved in helping solve his friend's murder. The primary suspect according to the FBI agent from Lander is one of the reservation's most promising young men, Anthony. Vicki Holden is an attorney working in Lander hoping to help her Arapahoe tribesmen. She becomes Anthony's attorney. Many other factors, twists and turns leave the reader guessing and hypothesizing as to the motive and murderer.Coel brings the beauty of the American West and the culture of the Arapahoe tribe to the reader in an entertaining way. You will learn from this book and you will reflect on the history of European settlers and the Native American tribes of this diverse continent.This is a quick read and an enjoyable read. Check it out!

There was a decent plot. Unfortunately, that wasn't enough. The characters were thinly drawn, and not well. Teasing bits of information about them, rather than fleshing them out clearly. Stereotyping, rather than personalizing. It could have been a good book, but it really wasnt.

“The Eagle Dancer” is a mystery novel by Margaret Coel set on the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming. Channeling Tony Hillerman and his popular Leaphorn/Chee series, Coel blends murder and Arapaho culture into her story featuring crime solvers Father John O’Malley who’s a history scholar and local pastor and Vicky Holden who is a Native American attorney. During a tribal gathering for a powwow the tribal chairman is murdered and his nephew is the prime suspect. Despite the many glowing reviews posted here and my wife’s enthusiasm for this series I could not get into this book at all. I tried it about a year ago and only made it about 60 pages and put it aside. I picked it up again the other day and didn’t get much further. I loved Tony Hillerman’s work and to a lesser extent his daughter’s continuation of his series but in my opinion Ms. Coel pales in comparison. The pace is slow, there’s no suspense; in other words it’s boring. My biggest obstacle was the protagonist, Father O’Malley; an Irish Jesuit priest who is a recovering alcoholic transplanted from Boston with an accent as “thick as clam chowder” who shuns clerical garb in favor of Western wear and drives around in a pickup truck while listening to ‘La Traviata’ felt pretty contrived to me. Kind of like Father Dowling goes West, only with more baggage. Other characters lacked dimension and I just couldn’t connect. Clearly many others disagree as there are 25 novels in the Wind River series so I’ll concede I must be missing something. 2-stars and that’s only because my wife liked the book and the next six she’s read. To each his own but I'm done.

This is the first book I have read by this author. I have read all of TonyHillerman’s books and R. Allen Chappell’s Navajo mystery series – all of which I have loved, and I am always looking for books in the same vein.I liked Eagle Catcher very much. It is a little “black and white” in terms of good characters and bad characters, which is not particularly unusual, but the characters are well developed and you grow fond of the heroes. The story develops well and keeps the reader is suspense for the most part.Any complaints I have about the book are pretty minor. I thought it was unrealistic to have Vicki the lawyer tell her client Anthony to tell all he knew to the authorities who were ready to question him. She had just showed up and had not even talked with him herself. I also thought she was a little quick to assume his innocence given the case against him.But I thoroughly enjoyed the book and look forward to reading more of the series.

What guided the hand of Harvey Castle's murderer? He was a step father, may it be someone in his family had grudges against him? He was a tribal councilman of the Arapaho, may it be that some of the people hated him now that some of the oil well of the reservation seem to go dry for no good reason? Harvey didn't seem to do enough about it. He was a historian, may it be that he discovered something during his research for the book on Arapaho history? Something that, although buried in the past, could affect the present?Well, of one thing Father John is certain: the FBI got it wrong, it has nothing to do with Anthony, Harvey's step son. So it has to be one of the other reasons, and he's going to discover what.There are quite a few things that I liked of this book. First off, the setting. The Arapaho reservation appears on the pages with great clearity, with strong images, personal images suggesting a first hand knowledge of the matter. Life in the reservation is also very well described: the tights between people, the attitudes, the beliefs, the way people think and act.And the environment. The plains come to life in Coel's descriptions, which is one of the most effective element in the book, in my opinion.But there are also quite a few things that I don't' like, and I'm sorry to say these things regard the story. Namely the plot and the characters.The plot it's a bit predictable, I couldn't really feel it moving, or better, I felt it moving, but I couldn't really say whether what happened was important or not. There are a lot of episodes in this novel and many of them have nothing to do with the mystery plot. Sometime I even wondered why they were even there, since they didn't seem to advance the story nor to make me understand the characters better. They just seem to be there for no good reason. But they did mess up the plot to a point that when something important did happen, I barely noticed it. That's why the plot tended to lose me at the end rather than grasp me, I'm afraid.The characters have a habit to be a bit formulaic. They are likable, they have their qualities and their flaws, they just... well, they just look too much as characters. They have specific traits, they have always flaws to balance their qualities, their patterns tend to repeat. They didn't' feel natural, that's my main problem with the book. Because I don't' really need a plot that blows me away, I don't really need incredible exotic settings, but I do really need characters I can relate to. It didn't happen. Shame.

Yes liked this book

Wind River Reservationでアラパホ族の祭りpowwowが始まるとき、族長ハーヴェイ・キャスルが彼のテント内で刺し殺されているのを神父ファーザー・ジョン・アロイシス・オマリーが見つけた。凶器のナイフはハーヴェイの甥アンソニーのモノで、前夜二人が口論していたことから当地管轄警察のアート・バナー局長もやむなく疑い、都落ちしてきた若いFBIエージェント ジャフ・ミラーが勢い込んで逮捕してしまった。この地は石油が出ることでもあり、白人のネッド・クーリーが持つ土地をアラパホ族が買い戻そうという動きが縺れて不穏な空気となっていた。ファーザー・ジョンはロスにいるアラパホ族出身の女性弁護士ヴィッキー・ホールデンを呼び戻したが、ネッドの姪メリッサとアンソニーが恋仲で当夜のアリバイがあるとわかって捜査は振り出しに戻り、原住民と白人の両家の憎しみが顕在化した。ハーヴェイの事務所が荒らされ、大昔からの日誌を掘り起こすとアラパホとクーリー一家との間で土地を巡っていま知られては困ることが書いてあり、これが殺人の動機かとなった。原住民の悲しみと白人の横暴といういささかステレオタイプではあるが、舞台回しをするファーザー・ジョンは6年前にこの地の教会に赴任して以来、いまではすっかり同化してアラパホと共に考えている。また片腕となるヴィッキーもファーザー・ジョンを助けてくれ、二人はシリーズを通して活躍する予感がする。全体的に血なまぐさい立ち回りはなく、スローペースで土地と原住民の年寄りを大事にする人間関係を描いて、落ち着いた読後感が得られた。