The Sinister Pig
First edition cover
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| Author | Tony Hillerman |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Peter Thorpe |
| Country | USA |
| Language | English |
| Series | Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee Navajo Tribal Police Series |
| Genre | Detective fiction |
| Set in | Navajo Nation and Hopi Reservation in Southwestern United States |
| Published | 2003 HarperCollins |
| Media type | Print and audio |
| Pages | 228 |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 51766303 |
| Preceded by | The Wailing Wind, 2002 |
| Followed by | Skeleton Man, 2004 |
The Sinister Pig is the sixteenth crime fiction novel in the Joe Leaphorn / Jim Chee Navajo Tribal Police series by Tony Hillerman, first published in 2003. It was a New York Times best-seller.
A mystery involving diverted oil and gas revenues, abandoned pipelines, Washington D.C. insiders, and illegal drugs involves Navajo Tribal Police Sergeant Jim Chee and Bernadette Manuelito, now a federal Border Patrol officer. Each turns to retired Lt. Joe Leaphorn, now called legendary by his colleagues as well as by Chee, for assistance. Along the way, elegant and dramatic romances reach happy conclusions.
Not long after Carl Manken leaves Washington D.C. to investigate an issue in the news, his murdered corpse is found on the edge of the Checkerboard part of the Navajo Reservation, near the Apache Jicarilla Reservation. Soon, his vehicle is found on the Jicarilla Reservation. Each use of Manken’s credit card is monitored by the issuer, a high-level intervention that sends Sgt. Chee and FBI Agent Osborne to retrieve the card from the workmen using it after finding it in trash they picked up. In Washington D.C., the newsworthy issue is the large amount of royalties never paid to the tribes who own the land providing natural resources, including oil, natural gas and coal; the tribes are suing the Department of Interior.
Bernadette Manuelito is on routine surveillance in her new position as a US Customs Patrol Officer, when she finds the Tuttle ranch in the boot heel of New Mexico, where a truck with Mexican license plates enters. She investigates, taking photos of the exotic wildlife and the construction project underway, described as a pump for water for the oryxes and ibexes. She shares the prints of her photos with Sgt. Chee, who in turn shares them with Lt. Leaphorn. One of the trucks in her photos is from Seamless Weld of El Paso, Texas, the same company that the dead man reported as his employer on the rental car form. Her boss, Ed Henry, takes the negatives and other set of prints, while taking a photo of her and telling her to leave the ranch alone. On her first successful solo netting, taking in a group of illegal aliens, the brother-in-law in the group recognizes Manuelito from photos circulating among the drug dealers in Sonora, with word to kill her. Her roommate Mrs. Garza calls Leaphorn with this information, because Manuelito will not call Chee. Leaphorn finds that the pathway of the unused pipeline from the now disused Mexican copper mine passes right through the Tuttle ranch, shown on an old map when the smelter was active. He figures the work recently done at each place is to get the pipeline working again, either to divert natural gas or oil southbound, or to bring in drugs, northbound. The Tuttle ranch is a lease on BLM lands, giving Dashee authority to be there; he and Sgt. Chee head for the ranch directly.
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