Tony Hillerman Seems To Get Lost In ‘Finding Moon’

“Finding Moon” By Tony Hillerman, (HarperCollins, $24)

After writing a string of first-rate novels dealing with crime and punishment in the Southwestern Navajo country, Tony Hillerman wanders off the reservation in “Finding Moon” and quickly loses his way.

The novel begins interestingly enough. Moon Mathias is the managing editor of a small-town Colorado newspaper. He used to drink. Now he doesn’t. His life is in a despairing rut.

A phone call tells him that his mother has had a heart attack in the Los Angeles airport and has been hospitalized. Since his mother lives in Florida, Moon is at a loss as to what she is doing there.

He goes to her, she tells him that his brother Ricky, who died in Vietnam, fathered a child and she had planned to fly to Southeast Asia to get that baby before she was stricken. Now, she tells Moon, he must go in her place. And he does, but very reluctantly.

Moon makes it to Manila, but Hillerman’s story doesn’t.

The little action there was bogs down completely as Moon, for page after page, searches his memory for why he is what he is and how he got to be that way.

The reader finds out an awful lot about Moon, but since he’s not an interesting man, neither are his memories interesting.

In Manila, Moon hooks up with a woman named Osa, who wants him to take her to Cambodia to search for her missing brother while Moon is searching for his niece. Moon and Osa go. They have a series of highly improbable adventures. They come back.

In an apologetic note, Hillerman promises to return to the reservation in his next book. It is fervently hoped he does so.