The Probabilities Archive: Tony Hillerman (1925-2008) II, “Sacred Clowns,” 1993

Tony Hillerman (1925-2008) in conversation with Richard Wolinsky and Richard A. Lupoff, recorded November 8, 1993 while on tour for the novel “Sacred Clowns.” This is the second of four interviews.Digitized, remastered and edited in February 2024 by Richard Wolinsky. This interview has not been heard in three decades.

Tony Hillerman, who died in 2008 at the age of 83. Was a master of the detective genre and an important writer in detailing life on the Navajo reservation. His several novels featuring Navajo police officers Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee have been acclaimed for their accuracy and for their ability to combine Navajo history and thought into strong plot-driven novels.

Notes on the interview:

The film The Dark Wind, starring Lou Diamond Phillips as Chee and Fred Ward as Joe Leaphorn was directed by Errol Morris, who became better known as a director of documentaries such as The Fog of War. It can be rented via Apple or Amazon. The second season of Dark Winds is based on the novel People of Darkness and features the character based on the killer that Tony Hillerman met in prison.

A Thief of Time became a film in 2003 with Adam Beach as Chee and Wes Studio as Joe Leaphorn. The book Tony Hillerman talks about as an example of a literary mystery is The Late Man by James Preston Girard, published in September 1993. According to Amazon, that is and was his only novel. The non-Navajo novel he was writing at the time of the interview, Finding Moon, was published in 1996 and is discussed in the third Tony Hillerman interview, from 1997, which has yet to be digitized. Anne Hillerman has continued the Leaphorn Chee series, and the next book, Lost Birds, will be published in April 2024.

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