died tony hillerman author books detective novels

Tony Hillerman was born May 27, 1925 and died October 26, 2008. He was an American author of detective novels and non fiction works.
Tony Hillerman: The Art of the Mystery

His mystery novels are set in the Four Corners area of New Mexico and Arizona. The protagonists are Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee of the Navajo tribal police. Lt. Leaphorn was introduced in Hillerman's first novel, The Blessing Way 1970. The second book in the series, Dance Hall of the Dead 1973, won a 1974 Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best Novel. In 1991, Hillerman received the MWA's Grand Master Award. Hillerman has also received the Nero Award, for Coyote Waits, and the Navajo Tribe's Special Friends of the Diné Award.
Hillerman, who was born in Sacred Heart, Oklahoma, is a decorated combat veteran from World War II, serving as a mortarman in the 103rd Infantry Division and earning the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, and a Purple Heart. Later, he worked as a journalist from 1948 to 1962. Then he earned a Masters degree and taught journalism from 1966 to 1987 at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, where he resided with his wife until his death in 2008. Hillerman, a consistently bestselling author, was ranked as New Mexico's 22nd wealthiest man in 1996.
Hillerman's writing is noted for the cultural details he provides for the people he writes about: Hopi, Zuni, European-American, federal agents, and especially Navajo. His works in non-fiction and in fiction reflect his appreciation of the natural wonders of the American Southwest and his appreciation of its people, particularly the Navajo.
Hillerman repeatedly acknowledged his debt to an earlier series of mystery novels set among tribal Aborigines in remote desert regions of tropical and subtropical Australia written the British-born Australian author Arthur W Upfield. The Upfield novels appeared first in 1928 and featured a half-European, half-Aboriginal Australian hero, Detective-inspector Napoleon Bony Bonaparte working with deep understanding of tribal traditions. The character was based on the real-life achievements of an Aborigine known as Tracker Leon, whom Upfield had met during his years in the Australian bush.
Hillerman acknowledged the debt in many interviews, and in his introduction to the posthumous 1984 reprint of Upfield's A Royal Abduction.
In this, he described the seduction in his youth of Upfield's crime novels' descriptions of both the harsh outback areas, and "the people who somehow survived upon them ... . When my own Jim Chee of the Navaho Tribal Police unravels a mystery because he understands the ways of his people, when he reads the signs in the sandy bottom of a reservation arroyo, he is walking in the tracks Bony made 50 years ago."
Upfield and Hillerman are recognized as pioneers of what is now known as the tribal mystery genre.
Bio info (c) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Hillerman