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Overview
When Never-ending-snake begins, Navajo Police Special Investigator Ella Clah is returning from Washington, DC, where she was offered a lucrative job with a private security firm. Taking the job would mean uprooting her daughter, but it might give the young teen opportunities she’d never see on the Reservation.
As Ella and her companions deplane, gunfire sends them diving for cover. When the shooting stops, a Navajo war hero has been mortally wounded—but was alternative fuel lobbyist Nelson Lonewolf the intended victim? Or was the gunman aiming for powerful tribal attorney Kevin Tolino? Or for Ella herself?
Ella struggles to find the killers while helping the tribe find a way to move forward with the alternative-fuel project and protecting her family—and Kevin, her daughter’s father.
Never-ending-snake, a tense police procedural, is part of the Ella Clah mystery series.
Editorials
From the Publisher
Praise for Earthway:“Clah is always good company, on and off the reservation.”—The New York Times Book Review“An unusually tense mystery.”—Kirkus Reviews
“A well-paced story built around the timely and dangerous effect international politics can have on the lives of every-day people.”—The Denver Post
“Ella is compelling as a highly skilled officer of the law dealing with modern vs. traditionalist issues on the reservation.”—RT Book Reviews
Publishers Weekly
At the start of the Thurlos' engaging 16th Ella Clah mystery (after 2009's Earthway), two gun men ambush Ella, a special investigator for the Navajo Tribal Police; attorney Kevin Tolino, Ella's ex-boyfriend and father of her 11-year-old daughter; and Afghanistan war hero Adam Longwolf, now a Navajo lobbyist, at the landing strip outside Shiprock, N. Mex., shortly after their return from a trip to Washington, D.C. Ella and Kevin escape serious injury, but not Adam, who it turns out was carrying ,000 in a Monopoly game though he's in no condition to explain why. Since Kevin had been building a case against casino manager Alan Grady for suspicious practices, Ella and Chief Big Ed Atcitty wonder if Alan was behind the attack. Another possibility is someone connected to the controversial Prickly Weed Project, which is developing alternative fuel on tribal lands. As the complicated, sometimes detail-heavy investigation unfolds, Ella must juggle her feelings for Kevin and her prim love, Rev. Ford Tome. (Sept.)Kirkus Reviews
Navajo Police Special Investigator Ella Clah has several cases to solve, including her own attempted murder.
When Ella, together with Kevin Tolino, the attorney father of her daughter Dawn, and war hero-turned-lobbyist Adam Lonewolf return from a trip to Washington, D.C., they are met at the tiny Shiprock airport by two men and a hail of gunfire. Tolino and Lonewolf, badly wounded, are rushed to the hospital and hidden away from the killers still stalking them, leaving Ella and her team to figure out who was the target of all those bullets. Tolino's investigation of the dubious business practices of the company running the Navajo casino has ruffled a lot of feathers. Lonewolf has been lobbying an alternative-energy company interested in turning tumbleweed into fuel, an idea many traditionalist tribe members find abhorrent. And of course Ella's long career as a police officer (Earthway, 2009, etc.) has made her enemies of her own. As Dawn schemes to reunite her parents, Ella wonders whether to take a lucrative job in D.C. and whether her romance with a minister with a mysterious intelligence background has any future. At the same time, she feels pressure to solve the difficult case. Lonewolf was carrying a Monopoly game stuffed with $75,000 in real money. Now that he's in a coma, it's up to Ella to figure out what the money was for.
Another middling mystery enlivened by its glimpse into the complicated lives of modern reservation dwellers.