Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1998. [Vol. 5.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 25)

Studies - Robert Murray Davis: Multiple Voices in The Death of Bernadette Lefthand

ROBERT MURRAY DAVIS MULTIPLE VOICES IN THE DEATH OF BERNADETTE LEFTHAND Even without Tony Hillerman's praise above the title of the Bantam edition of Ron Querry's The Death of Bernadette Lefthand (New York: Bantam, 1995; first published 1993), comparisons with Hillerman's mystery novels are inevitable. Both construct plots about murderers and victims; both draw upon the local color of the Four Corners area of New Mexico and Arizona; both deal with Indian

1 characters and draw upon Navajo customs and beliefs; both implicitly acknowledge that they not part of the culture they describe. The similarities may account for Antonya Nelson's dissatisfaction with Querry's book in her New York Times review. She complained that the two first person narrators "cannot sustain suspense in the mystery because they do not have sufficient information to present to the reader. Much of what they report is either digressive or ancillary." When the element of witchcraft appears, however, the reader "feels the growing threat to Bernadette's life" and "The book begins to feel like a mystery...." This leads Nelson to predict that Querry will "find the perfect balance between the evocative Southwest and the equally evocative mystery genre" (Nelson 31). Her description of the book, if not her judgment, is more or less supportable. Bernadette Lefthand has been killed

—not, as her friends, family, and even the ostensible murderer think, by Anderson George, her handsome, alcoholic Navajo husband but by Emmett Take Horse, physically and spiritually deformed, who turns first to witchcraft, then 1 I use "Indian" in preference to "Native American," following the usage of my First American colleagues. 57