The Shape Shifter

Blurb

The Shape Shifter is the eighteenth crime fiction novel in the Joe Leaphorn / Jim Chee Navajo Tribal Police series by Tony Hillerman, first published in 2006. It was a New York Times best-seller and the last Chee/Leaphorn novel by Hillerman published before Hillerman's death on October 26, 2008.
A cold case from Lt. Leaphorn's earliest days as a police officer finds new evidence, which he pursues though he is retired. The slick and cruel perpetrator continues his same modus operandi, but Leaphorn gets evidence on this elusive murderer and thief, leading to a dangerous final encounter. The story ties the 1860s forced Long Walk of the Navajo, US operations in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s, Navajo beliefs of greed as the main evil, and the concept of skinwalker or shape shifter in a 21st-century tale.