Tony Hillerman, 83; wrote Navajo mysteries

PHOENIX - Tony Hillerman, 83, author of the acclaimed Navajo Tribal Police mystery novels and creator of two of the unlikeliest of literary heroes - Navajo police officers Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee - died Sunday of pulmonary failure.

Mr. Hillerman's daughter Anne Hillerman said her father's health had been declining in the last couple of years and that he was at Presbyterian Hospital in Albuquerque, N.M., when he died.

He lived through two heart attacks and surgeries for prostate and bladder cancer. He kept tapping at his keyboard even as his eyes began to dim, as his hearing faded, as rheumatoid arthritis turned his hands into claws.

"I'm getting old," he said in 2002, "but I still like to write."

Lt. Joe Leaphorn, introduced in

The Blessing Way

in 1970, was an experienced police officer who understood, but did not share, his people's traditional belief in a rich spirit world. Officer Jim Chee, introduced in

People of Darkness

in 1978, was a younger officer studying to become a

hathaali

- Navajo for "shaman." They struggled daily to bridge the divide between the dominant Anglo society and the impoverished people who call themselves the Dineh.

His commercial breakthrough was

Skinwalkers

, published in 1987 - the first time he put both characters and their divergent worldviews in the same book. It sold 430,000 hardcover copies, paving the way for

A Thief of Time

, which made several bestseller lists. In all, he wrote 18 books in the Navajo series, the most recent

The Shape Shifter

.

Each is characterized by an unadorned writing style, intricate plotting, memorable characterization, and vivid descriptions of Indian rituals and of the vast plateau of the Navajo reservation in the Four Corners region of the Southwest.

The most acclaimed of them, including

Talking God

and

Coyote Waits

, are subtle explorations of human nature and the conflict between cultural assimilation and the pull of the old ways.

"I want Americans to stop thinking of Navajos as primitive persons, to understand that they are sophisticated and complicated," Mr. Hillerman once said.

Occasionally, he was accused of exploiting his knowledge of Navajo culture for personal gain, but in 1987, the Navajo Tribal Council honored him with its Special Friend of the Dineh award. He took greater pride in that, he often said, than in the many awards bestowed by his peers.

Although he was best known for the Navajo series, he wrote more than 30 books, including a novel for young people; a memoir,

Seldom Disappointed

; and books on the history and natural beauty of his beloved Southwest.

He also edited or contributed to more than a dozen other books including crime and history anthologies and books on the craft of writing.

Born May 27, 1925, in Sacred Heart, Okla., population 50, Tony Hillerman was the son of August and Lucy Grove Hillerman. They were farmers who also ran a small store. It was there that young Tony listened spellbound to locals who gathered to tell their stories.

The teacher at Sacred Heart's one-room schoolhouse was rumored to be a member of the Ku Klux Klan, so Tony's parents sent him and his brother, Barney, to St. Mary's Academy, a school for Potawatomie Indian girls near Asher, Okla. It was at St. Mary's that he developed a lifelong respect for Indian culture - and an appreciation of what it means to be an outsider in your own land.

In 1943, he interrupted his education at the University of Oklahoma to join the Army. He lugged his mortar ashore at D-Day with the 103d Infantry Division and was severely wounded in battle at Alsace, France. He returned from Europe a war hero with a Silver Star with Oak Leaf Cluster, temporary blindness, and two shattered legs that never stopped causing him pain.

He returned to the university for his degree and, in 1948, married Marie Unzer. Together, they raised six children, five of them adopted.

As a young man, he farmed, drove a truck, toiled as an oil-field roughneck, and worked as a reporter and editor for a variety of newspapers. He quit in 1962 to earn a master's degree from the University of New Mexico, where he later taught journalism and eventually became chairman of the journalism department. In 1993, he was inducted into the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame.

He was still teaching when he wrote

Blessing Way

. A story that always made him chuckle: His first agent advised him that if he wanted to get published, he would have to "get rid of that Indian stuff."

Mr. Hillerman is survived by his wife, Marie, and their six children. Services are pending.