Masked Dancers

If Tony Hillerman first opened the door for Native American mysteries, Jean Hager is now holding it wide in grand style. Her Molly Bearpaw books( The Spirit Caller came out in 1997) are full of energy and controlled anger, and her series about Mitch Bushyhead, police chief of Buckskin, Oklahoma, presents deliberately cool-headed looks at volatile issues. In Masked Dancers , Chief Bushyhead, a recent widower and concerned parent of a teenaged daughter, continues learning about his own Cherokee heritage as he looks into the possibly linked deaths of a game warden and a high school principal. The warden was investigating the illegal slaughter of bald eagles, whose protected feathers are featured in the tribal dances staged by the educator. The most likely candidate for the killings is a racist fanatic, but the principal's wife also has some odd moves to explain. Other Bushyhead books in paperback include Fire Carrier and The Grandfather Medicine . --Dick Adler From Kirkus Reviews Police Chief Mitch Bushyhead of Buckskin, Oklahoma (The Fire-Carrier, etc.), faces a challenging puzzle in his sleepy bailiwick when, during a rainstorm, his daughter Emily and two friends seek shelter in a cave and discover the body of Wildlife warden Arnett Walsh, shot to death. Nearby, Mitch finds a dead bald eagle (forbidden prey) and a tiny, faded photo of a woman. He questions high school principal Vian Brasfield, a part-Cherokee obsessed with his Indian heritage and rumored to have supplied eagle feathers for the ceremonial dances held regularly on his property outside town. Brasfields property abuts land owned by anti-Indian, anti-government fanatic Dane Kennedy, long deserted by his wife. Danes son Hunter teaches at the high school; a daughter and son-in-law occupy a trailer on his land. Meantime, Brasfields stoic wife Nicole seems unperturbed when her husband vanishes after a Friday night dance at the Indian ground, where he cavorted in mask and costume. His body is found days later, in a pond on Kennedys property. Another death, and a long-in-coming identification of the faded photo, enable Mitch to throw a light on the surprising liaison and the long-ago events that will eventually solve the case. Tidily plotted but uncompellingly motivated: another chapter in the low-keyed, slow-moving town of Buckskin, where widower Mitchs burgeoning romance with local doctor Rhea is one of the livelier elements. Hager fans will love it. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.