“Dark Winds” (2022), 6-part AMC series, based on this novel.

Listening Woman is a good story. There is a lot of suspense. The characters are believable and the settings are well described. The reason for the three star rating is that the story just ends. It leaves the reader on a ledge like the characters in the book. ( )

Joe Leaphorn needs to find out why an old man who may have held sacred secrets was brutally murdered, and whether it could possibly be connected to an unsolved armored car robbery that left the FBI mystified. Most of Joe's "detecting" occurs in his head, and he becomes a one man search party whose quarry is determined to leave him dead in the isolated caves and canyons of the Navajo Nation. But it isn't his own life Joe is trying to save; a van full of kidnapped Boy Scouts have been taken hostage in an apparent re-creation of a long-ago massacre of the same number of Indian children. Joe doubts the legitimacy of the kidnappers' devotion to any "cause", but not their willingness to kill. He needs every ounce of intuition, resourcefulness and physical strength he can muster to survive and prevent another tragedy. ( )

And old man and a young girl are murdered, but the Listening Woman who was with them is not touched, and it's up to Lieutenant Leaphorn why the murders were committed and why the shaman was left to bear witness. This is a great installment in the series which will provide a generous helping of Navajo culture and a big serving of action to go along. You can tell this is an early book in the series by the amount of running around Leaphorn gets to do - he's a bit older in the later installments (and lets Chee do the running). The mystery itself is quite involved as well with some very unexpected plot twists. The books that involve both Leaphorn and Chee are my favorites in the series, but this is a solid installment in the sole-Leaphorn canon. ( )

radical plot to ransom boy scouts foiled by Leaphorns knowledge of old ways