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Overview
A murderer is stalking and scalping white men in Seattle. While this so-called Indian Killer terrorizes the city, its Native American population is thrown into turmoil. John Smith, an Indian adopted as a newborn baby into a white family, is increasingly dissatisfied with his life and dreams of the existence he might have led on the reservation - he is gently descending into madness. In his search for connection he meets Marie, a strident young student at the local university who is isolated from her tribe; she is highly educated, but not in her own traditions. Marie is particularly enraged with people such as Jack Wilson, a local ex-cop and now a popular mystery writer who passes himself off as part Indian in a desperate attempt at acceptance. Jack is determined to write about the brutal killings in his next novel, a novel that he believes will truly reveal what it is like to be Indian. With each new murder, the city is gripped by fear, and hate crimes perpetrated by white men against the Native American community grow increasingly violent. As the murderer searches for his latest victim, and the Indian population of Seattle is filled with a strange combination of fear and relief, Indian Killer builds to an unexpected and terrifying climax.Synopsis
“Part thriller, part magical realism, and part social commentary, Indian Killer . . . lingers long past the final page.”—Seattle Weekly
A national best seller, Indian Killer is arguably Sherman Alexie’s most controversial book to date—a gritty, racially charged literary thriller that, over a decade after its first publication, remains an electrifying tale of alienation and justice. A serial murderer called the Indian Killer is terrorizing Seattle, hunting, scalping, and slaughtering white men. Motivated by rage and seeking retribution for his people’s violent history, his grizzly MO and skillful elusiveness both paralyze the city with fear and prompt an uprising of racial brutality. Out of the chaos emerges John Smith. Born to Indians but raised by white parents, Smith yearns for his lost heritage. As his embitterment with his dual life increases, Smith falls deeper into vengeful madness and quickly surfaces as the prime suspect. Tensions mount, and while Smith battles to allay the anger that engulfs him, the Indian Killer claims another life. With acerbic wit and chilling page-turning intensity, Alexie takes an unflinching look at what nurtures rage within a race both colonized and marginalized by a society that neither values nor understands it.
Robert Spillman
Sherman Alexie is a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian who's received much deserved praise for his wry, taut, short story collection The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, and for his blackly funny first novel Reservation Blues. With the ambitious and provocative Indian Killer, however, Alexie has arrived as one of the most potent new voices in American fiction. This multi-faceted tale is set in Seattle, a melting pot of Indians and whites, and the home of John Smith -- a tall, full-blooded Indian of an unknown tribe, raised by his loving white adoptive parents. A construction worker on "the last skyscraper in Seattle," John is a loner who hears voices, mainly that of his mentor, a Jesuit Indian who walked into the desert never to be seen again.
John feels neither Indian nor white, and he longs to lash out both at his own insensibility and in retribution for the entire history of Indian/white confrontation, "as if the world could be changed with a single gesture." He decides that this single gesture should be the random killing of a white man. After committing the bloody murder, John isn't satisfied and thinks that he needs to commit a much more brutal crime to capture the attention of white America. Some liberals and Indians are (uneasily) thrilled by this belated revenge, and everyone has an opinion about who is really behind the gruesome acts. John's violent and seemingly untraceable path crosses with a variety of well-sketched minor characters: an Indian student activist; a well-meaning white anthropologist who teaches Native American lit; a white ex-cop mystery writer who claims to be Indian and thus feels entitled to speak for all Indians; an angry young white man whose brother has been killed and who seeks revenge against all Indians; an angry young Indian whose white father beat him and who now lashes out against all white men; and a right-wing talk radio host who spreads fear of Indians after a white man is found scalped. Alexie neatly weaves them into a mesmerizing thriller packed with a righteous indignation reminiscent of James Baldwin at his best. This is a passionate, beautifully constructed and compelling novel by an extremely gifted writer. -- Salon
Editorials
Robert Spillman
Sherman Alexie is a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian who's received much deserved praise for his wry, taut, short story collection The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, and for his blackly funny first novel Reservation Blues. With the ambitious and provocative Indian Killer, however, Alexie has arrived as one of the most potent new voices in American fiction. This multi-faceted tale is set in Seattle, a melting pot of Indians and whites, and the home of John Smith -- a tall, full-blooded Indian of an unknown tribe, raised by his loving white adoptive parents. A construction worker on "the last skyscraper in Seattle," John is a loner who hears voices, mainly that of his mentor, a Jesuit Indian who walked into the desert never to be seen again.
John feels neither Indian nor white, and he longs to lash out both at his own insensibility and in retribution for the entire history of Indian/white confrontation, "as if the world could be changed with a single gesture." He decides that this single gesture should be the random killing of a white man. After committing the bloody murder, John isn't satisfied and thinks that he needs to commit a much more brutal crime to capture the attention of white America. Some liberals and Indians are (uneasily) thrilled by this belated revenge, and everyone has an opinion about who is really behind the gruesome acts. John's violent and seemingly untraceable path crosses with a variety of well-sketched minor characters: an Indian student activist; a well-meaning white anthropologist who teaches Native American lit; a white ex-cop mystery writer who claims to be Indian and thus feels entitled to speak for all Indians; an angry young white man whose brother has been killed and who seeks revenge against all Indians; an angry young Indian whose white father beat him and who now lashes out against all white men; and a right-wing talk radio host who spreads fear of Indians after a white man is found scalped. Alexie neatly weaves them into a mesmerizing thriller packed with a righteous indignation reminiscent of James Baldwin at his best. This is a passionate, beautifully constructed and compelling novel by an extremely gifted writer. -- Salon
Kirkus Reviews
A terrific second novel by the talented young Native American author whose highly praised fiction (The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, 1993; Reservation Blues, 1995) has already moved him on to the short list of the country's best young writers.
It's a rich, panoramic portrayal of contemporary Seattle that uses the form of the mystery to tell some uncomfortable home truths about Indian-white relations, and indeed racism in all its forms. Alexie begins by focusing on the ironically named John Smith, who was either given up for adoption by, or stolen away from, his teenaged Indian mother. He is raised by loving and conscientious white "parents" and finds himself in traumatized adulthood "an Indian without a tribe," a misfit who belongs to no culture, wandering the streets among the city's homeless, seeking an outlet for the unfocused rage he knows he can no longer suppress. Is John Smith the "Indian killer" who stalks and murders white men, scalping them for good measure, terrorizing the city and provoking a rash of racially motivated violence? Alexie teases us with that possibility right up to the last page, meanwhile populating his exciting story with a host of keenly observed and rigorously analyzed characters. The most memorable include Marie Polatkin, a fiery Native American college student and activist with no use for sentimental white liberals; Jack Wilson, an ex-cop turned popular novelist, whose exploration (and exploitation) of a small trace of "Indian blood" in his ancestry infuriates his full-blooded "brothers"; and John Smith's adoptive parents, Olivia and Daniel, whose decency and good will are portrayed with fairness and respect. Alexiesucceeds brilliantly at suggesting the time- bombticking character of John Smith's ravaged psyche, and the novel rips along at a breathless pace.
Both a splendidly constructed and wonderfully readable thriller—and a haunting, challenging articulation of the plight and the pride of contemporary Native Americans.