The Use of Mysteries in the Classroom

By Amy Denton

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In the public school or college classroom, multiple issues face the teacher, one being what to cover and how much to cover in the subject the class is about. Should the class be about history or English? A ready-made assignment is analyzing fiction for the subject. This practice teaches your students that not everything they read is dull, dry, academic text. Analyzation also uses those all-important critical thinking skills. If you're looking for a text that is a good fit for this assignment look no further than the Joe Leaphorn and Walt Longmire novels, written by Tony Hillerman and Craig Johnson, respectively.

In the history and English survey courses, what the student perceives to be the truth can greatly affect how they understand and process the information they are given. It is one of the jobs of the teacher to find out what those perceptions are and find a way to work with them. The easiest way to discover those preconceived notions is to ask. Don’t be surprised by the answers. Make a list. This list of questions is vital for opening the students’ minds to understanding something they may or may not have thought about---what people are like in other parts of the world and/or their own country. 

Ask them where their information about Native Americans comes from. Do not be surprised if the main answer is the internet, TV, or movies. Students today live in a highly digital society. Having easy access to vast amounts of knowledge is both a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing in that they can find whatever they need for a class, quickly and easily. But it can be a curse if the information is wrong. It’s a conundrum that has perplexed both college professors and high school teachers since the rise of the internet---how to get the needed information to the students without losing their attention but without turning the subject into a three-ring circus in an attempt to keep the students’ attention.

The answer? Use the media they are used to, video, in the form of tv episodes or movies as well as print media. Use an author who has won awards ranging from the Mystery Writers of America and the Agatha Malice Domestic Award for Lifetime Achievement to the Navajo Tribe’s Special Friends of the Dineh Award. Use Tony Hillerman.

The novels themselves will be a throwback in time for students who know no other world than computers, iPods, and cell phones. The first novel in the Joe Leaphorn series was printed in 1970, long before either they—and in some cases, their parents—were born. The first books in the series have no technology and give students a look at what life was like before technology took over. In that brief look, so much can be discovered: about the Four Corners area, the relationships between the characters, and, most importantly, the culture of multiple Indian tribes. It is through the stories that the students will learn about the different tribes, their traditions, and their differences. 

A good place to start the analysis is to look at the background of the writer and where his inspiration came from. The answer is in this case is simple. Hillerman wrote about what he knew. He lived among the people he wrote about. He started writing in the late 1960s, before computers. Research was done the old-fashioned way, living in the setting and among the people in the books. 

His inspiration, Hillerman claims, came from an Australian mystery writer Arthur Upfield. Upfield wrote a series of novels set in the Australian outback featuring Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte, “Bony,” of the Queensland Police Force, a half white, half Aborigine. That Hillerman was inspired by a native Australian to write mysteries staring Native Americans make his stories all the more compelling.

The landscape of the Southwest is as much a character as Joe Leaphorn or Jim Chee. From Window Rock in Arizona to Shiprock in New Mexico to Tuba City back in Arizona, the depth and the breadth of the Southwest is on full display in all of the books. An interesting avenue to take in class would be to assign specific regions from the books to students and have them research the area and the people that live in it. In this way, the students not only learn about places they have probably never heard of, but they also learn about the people who live there and why they live there. 

All of Hillerman’s novels are steeped in Native American culture; usually Navajo but sometimes Hopi and sometimes Zuni. In the first book in the series, The Blessing Way, the reader is introduced to half of one of the major Navajo song ceremonies, the Enemy Way. The ceremony is done to counter the harmful effects of the “chindi,” a ghost left behind after the death of a Navajo or to kill off a troublemaker. Joe Leaphorn attends an Enemy Way ceremony at the beginning of the book because of a body he finds. In the course of the story, the reader learns that the trouble maker, responsible for the body, is a Navajo named George Jackson, who was hired by Jimmy Hall, to keep people away from an Anasazi pueblo. Hall was collecting radar data from missiles being tested on federal land near the reservation. He had hoped to sell the information for a million dollars, a lot of money in 1970. In the end, Hall fails, shooting himself as Leaphorn approaches. 

In The Blessing Way, the reader discovers the Navajo philosophy of keeping peace in one’s life versus the desire for money. The book can be seen as a morality tale--- this is what can happen when the desire for money overwhelms everything else--- but it is first and foremost an excellent mystery. Seventeen novels continue Leaphorn’s story, each a study in Native American culture. 

Craig Johnson, author of the Walt Longmire mysteries, is another author prime for this assignment type. The series are alike in that they use Native Americans and the life on Native American reservations in their stories. The difference is that the main character in the Longmire series is white. However, his best friend , Henry Standing Bear, is Cheyenne. Longmire doesn’t work for the Tribal Police (Leaphorn does). He is the sheriff of Absaroka County, Wyoming. And he often has to deal with Native Americans from the reservation located in his county. 

The Cold Dish, the first book in the series, deals with a young Cheyenne girl suffering from fetal alcohol syndrome. She is sexually assaulted by four members of the local high school football team. Two years after nominal sentences are handed out to the boys, the least repentant one is found shot to death. The Cheyenne Nation is considered a sovereign nation within the borders of the United States, meaning Longmire, as an outside law enforcement officer, is not allowed to walk onto the reservation whenever he wants. The conclusion of the story will have students talking long after they have finished the book. 

Like Hillerman, Johnson lives in and among the people he writes about, near both the Crow and Cheyenne reservations in Wyoming. He has used people living on the reservations in the creation of some of the characters. Unlike Hillerman, Johnson came to writing after a career in law enforcement. He grew up in a rural part of the U.S. and comes from a long line of storytellers. Johnson claims he is just the first one in his family to write stories down. Among his many awards is the Tony Hillerman Mystery Short Story Award in 2006 for his short story “Old Indian Trick.”

Johnson has also had the internet and social media at his disposal since he began to write. The use of both in the classroom can make the learning of such complex concepts as “sovereign nations within a nation” or the status of federally recognized tribes in the U.S easier. After reading his books, students can go to Craig Johnson’s  website, download discussion questions and bring them to use in class. The questions are not easily answered. This makes for ready-made class discussions. 

Another media available for Johnson’s work is television. Hillerman had three of his novels turned into movies. Dark Winds is a recent television adaptation of his work. A&E aired the first episode of Longmire in June of 2012, followed by two more seasons. Netflix produced three additional seasons after that. 

One activity suggestion, from the storytelling perspective, is to have students choose a Native American character from the television show and explain why he is the way he is. Two possible examples are Acting Police Chief Mathias, the head of the Cheyenne Tribal Police, or Jacob Nighthorse, a Cheyenne businessman building a casino to benefit the Cheyenne with jobs and the proceeds of the casino. Students might also compare the Walt Longmire depicted in the books with the Walt Longmire seen in the television show to see what the differences are between the two and why.

The episodes of Longmire cover a variety of topics from the modern-day such as the treatment of Native American women. One of the best episodes is from the third season,“Miss Cheyenne.” At its heart, the entry deals with one of the many depredations visited upon Native American women, disguised as “help,” forced sterilization. At the end of the episode, a former Miss Cheyenne is discovered to have murdered the sons of a doctor who sterilized her many years ago without her consent or knowledge during a minor operation. A simple question to ask the students is: Why did the doctor decide to sterilize the woman? To look at it from another angle, why did the woman kill the sons of the doctor? Why not kill the doctor himself? These questions can lead the students to think of Native Americans and their lives in new ways.

Another part of the same episode deals with the Miss Cheyenne pageant, a real event that takes place every year and was “borrowed” by the television show. Contestants in their exquisitely beaded costumes are shown doing ceremonial dances that are part of the pageant. When the students see the costumes and the dancing, they see the real thing. This opens another avenue of questions. What exactly is the Miss Cheyenne pageant? Asking that question and more like it can be answered and discussed in the classroom as an extension of the Native American-White relations or Indian cultures. 

It may have never occurred to either man that their mysteries would be used to broaden high school students’ knowledge of Native Americans. The gift of using the Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee novels and the Walt Longmire series in history, English composition or Literature, is that it makes the class come alive.  

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Amy Denton been writing since high school and has been making up stories to amuse herself since she was a small child. Currently, she is a lecturer at University of Houston in the English Department. Denton also teaches history online at Southern New Hampshire University and Lone Star College. She is working on a paranormal mystery about a vampire mystery writer who is being stalked, titled Ink and Ashes. It was a finalist in the 2022 Claymore Awards. 

Hank Phillippi Ryan: Four Plots, One Great Story

by Clay Stafford,
Founder Killer Nashville,
Publisher Killer Nashville Magazine

For the first issue of the Killer Nashville Magazine, we could think of none better for our cover story than Hank Phillippi Ryan.  I was thrilled with the opportunity to interview Hank, being a fan of hers for over 6 years now. Hank started out of the gate in 2007 with her first published novel, Prime Time, winning the Agatha award. Add her on-air investigative reporter’s list of successes: she’s won 32 Emmys, 12 Edward R. Murrow awards, and dozens of other honors for her groundbreaking journalism for Boston’s NBC affiliate. In the literary world, she has been nominated and/or won every major mystery literary award including being a finalist this last year for Killer Nashville’s very own Silver Falchion Award. 

So, Hank, you’ve won both Emmys for investigative reporting and national book awards for fiction, which interest came first? Reporting or fiction writing?

Oh, impossible. It’s fun to think about, because who knows how our brains work, and who can ever really understand why we’re doing what we’re doing—or how it will turn out?

When I was a little girl, if I asked my mother another of what I’m sure she considered my endless questions, she’d say to me: “I’m not going to tell you. Go and find out.”

So—a little kid asking questions means they’re curious about the world, right? Is that from an interest in reporting, or storytelling? Or is that essentially the same mental process?

I’ve always loved mysteries—as a little girl, my sister and I would read up in the hayloft of our barn, and I fell in love with Sherlock Holmes and Nancy Drew and Hercule Poirot. We all did, right? But was it the tracking down clues and following leads and solving puzzles that I loved? Or the words and the creativity and the story telling? It’s the same, right?

And as I grew up, each career was a natural outcome. It just took me until I was 23 to become a reporter. And 65 to become a crime fiction author!

The reason I just fell over in my chair: there is no way you are 65 or anywhere near it. What makes your books stand out is the depth within the character’s setting. You use your fiction to highlight social issues. How do you keep the issues from becoming too heavy-handed within the storytelling?

Well, thank you! But I don’t think of it that way. Just as with television reporting, it’s all about telling a good story. It has to matter, people have to care, viewers have to learn something new, and come away from it with a different way of looking at the world. And it has to be entertaining, right? 

Same with my books. 

Books are about the real world, and what’s going on in the real world. And why we care about it. Ripped from the headlines? Adultery, political corruption, adoption scams, mortgage fraud, the housing crisis—and in the new WHAT YOU SEE (Forge, October 2015), surveillance and privacy.

Every day as I write, I ask myself—sometimes out loud!—“Why do I care?”

So because Jane and Jake are real people handling situations that could really happen, it’s all about how they deal with that reality. And we can ask ourselves—what would we do?  And since we love Jake and Jane, and we understand the mysteries they are trying to solve, we care. The “social issue” is just one of the puzzle pieces—it’s the people that matter.

You’ve written several series with distinct characters. How does one decide to write a series and how far ahead do you need to plan as the writer?

Plan? Ahead? Cue the crazed laughter. 

My first series grew out of my love for television and the voice of protagonist Charlotte McNally. She still talks to me. But when I had the idea for THE OTHER WOMAN, I knew that story was too big, too textured, to be carried by the first-person voice of Charlotte. It needed multiple points of view. So out of that came Jane Ryland and Jake Brogan. And they’re a series—Charlotte is, too—because we care about their lives, and we’re eager to find out what happens next. 

If there is any planning, it comes from the juggling of keeping the books fast-paced and suspenseful and giving them a big fat satisfying ending, but still with some things left unresolved in the characters’ lives. If the book ends with the happily married couple flying off into the sunset, that’s an end-end, right? If there’s a sinister figure watching them as they speed away, or if the bride is having second thoughts, or if the husband will be unemployed when they get home, that’s a series.  So the juggle is to get to the end without finishing everything. And the bigger juggle is that I have no idea.

How do you juggle your life: writing, reporting, book tours? You must be exhausted.

Oh, well, sometimes, yeah. But there is so much fuel in the wonderful responses, and the terrific audiences, and the friendship of readers and writers, and the joy of this once-in-a-lifetime experience. I am very lucky, and that goes a long way to erasing exhaustion. That and under-eye concealer.

And your family life?

My husband (a criminal defense attorney who is also juggling big cases and life-and-death situations—but in real life!) is very patient. And we eat a lot of carry-out salmon from Whole Foods.

What is the craziest interaction you’ve ever had with a fan?

No idea…let me think about this.

Attendees could not praise you enough when you were at Killer Nashville this past year for the Sisters in Crime special event. 

Aw, thank you. It was a real joy, and some of the manuscripts I read were fabulous. 

Who have been your mentors and/or the teachers who have influenced you the most?

My high school English teacher, Tom Thornburg (hi, Mr. Thornburg! He lives in Montana now) taught me be to be analytical, and critical, and careful. And to revere Shakespeare, which I still do. Hunter Thompson, who I worked with when I was at Rolling Stone magazine, taught me (among other things, like how to inhale lighter fluid and breathe fire) to go for it, and not be afraid to take writing risks. A news director named Jim Thistle—who taught me how to ask questions, and then one more, and then one more. Oh, gosh, so many. Sue Grafton, certainly.

You live such a varied life. Where do your ideas come from?

There’s a question that some authors loathe...but I love. And that is: where do your stories come from? Some authors answer with caustic throwaways—Schenectady, says one very famous guy. The grocery, says another.

But I think “where do your stories come from” is fascinating. 

And as for Truth Be Told, I can tell you exactly where it came from.

It’s a puzzle of four parts.

The first? My husband is a criminal defense attorney. When we first met, I asked: Have you ever had a murder case where the defendant was convicted, but you still thought they were innocent?" His eyes softened a bit, and then he said: “Yes.”   The man was charged with murder in the death of a young woman—the prosecution said he had lured her to a forest, and tied her to a tree.  

The first time Jonathan represented the man, the case ended in an overturned conviction. The state brought the charges again, and again Jonathan represented him, and again, overturned conviction.

The state brought the charges again, and again Jonathan represented him, and again, a hung jury.

The state brought the charges again, and the defendant—well, let’s just say he decided he wanted to handle the case his own way this time. Jonathan disagreed.  The man got a different lawyer. He was convicted, and is still in prison.

Jonathan told me he still, to this day, thinks the man is innocent.

Hmmm.  Idea.

Another puzzle piece? Another of Jonathan’s cases. A man in prison, incarcerated with a life sentence for shaking a baby to death, recently confessed to a cold-case murder. It’s very unlikely that he actually did it—so why would he confess? 

Hmmm. Idea.

Another puzzle piece.  I have done several stories about mortgage fraud, and foreclosure fraud. And here in Massachusetts, three new laws were passed as a result of our Emmy winning series on manipulation and deception  in the banking and mortgage world. We got peoples homes out of  foreclosure! And millions of dollars in refunds and restitution. So, that’s great.

But one day, my photographer and I were shooting video of an eviction. I can confess to you --there’s a lot of that going on here today! --we didn’t know who the owner of the home was that day. We were simply getting pictures of an eviction to illustrate the dire consequences of when someone is unlucky, or misled, or has a catastrophe of ad disaster, or makes a mistake. It is devastating.

At one point, a deputy came to the front door of the almost-empty house. I remember he was silhouetted in the door, his entire body the shape of unhappiness and confusion. Head hanging, his outstretched arms one each side of the open door, as if having to hold himself up.

What as making him so upset, I wondered?

I said to my photographer—who is used to my musings—“What if they found a dead body in there?”

And then I realized what that would mean. The deputies had been in that home clearing it out,  cleaning it up, yanking out the possessions and throwing them away.

What if, I thought, the law enforcement officers themselves had ruined a crime scene? Obliterated the evidence, trampled on everything, wiped the place clean? And then…

Oh. The cops ruined their own crime scene!

Hmmmm.  Idea.

I also thought about the people who had been evicted from those homes. People who’d gotten mortgages from banks with lots of money, but who through some failure of their lives, some catastrophe or disaster, some wrong decision or bad luck had not been able to keep up the payments.  Wouldn’t there be something that could have ben done to prevent that? If a banker-type really cared about their customers, wouldn’t there be something that could be done to keep people out of foreclosure?

Hmmmm.  Idea.

And finally, I was sitting at the computer in my TV station office, writing a story, and thinking about why I do what I do as a reporter.  It’s making history, I decided. It’s creating the record of what happened in our lives, the comings and goings, that issues and the solutions, the documentation of how we live.  And people believe it, right? What’s on TV and in the newspapers becomes a resource by which all is remembered and relied on.

And then I thought—what if some reporter decided not to tell the truth? Not big discoverable lie, but simply—little things. A sound bite, a reaction, a quote.  Who would know? What difference might that make?  And what would happen when the truth was finally told?

Hmmm.  Idea.

And in the way we all do as authors, by spinning and polishing and twisting and turning, and shooting it full of a lot of adrenaline and a little romance, I got the key elements of Truth Be Told:

 A mortgage banker turned Robin Hood decides to manipulate bank records to keep people out of foreclosure, a murder victim is found in a foreclosed home, a man confesses to the unsolved Lilac Sunday murder, and a reporter makes stuff up.   

And when it all comes together in the end: Truth Be Told.

If I wanted to read one book on how to be a writer, what book would I read?

Wow, impossible.

A how-to book wouldn’t do it, you know?

There are a lot out there.

There are terrific ones—On Writing by Stephen King. Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird. But “how-to” can’t teach you “how” to write if you’re not a reader.  Shakespeare for storytelling, Edith Wharton. Hunter Thompson. Stephen King. Tom Wolfe. Even reading bad stuff can make you better, right, if you think about why it’s bad.

I try to write the kind of book I’d like to read. And that’s how I know when my revision is compete—there’s a moment, in every book, where I forget I wrote it. I’m simply reading the story. And then I think—wow, it’s a book. I’m done.

A great list of people to study from, but Hank, I think you left one out: Hank Phillippi Ryan, right up there with the best writers on the planet.  Check out Hank’s body of work…and learn from the best.

Thanks, Hank, for being with us! For more on Hank, visit her at www.hankphillippiryan.com.

Until next month, read like someone is burning the books.

Clay Stafford,
Founder / Killer Nashville

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Clay Stafford is an author / filmmaker (www.ClayStafford.com) and founder of Killer Nashville (www.killernashville.com). In addition to selling over 1.5 million copies of his own books, Stafford’s latest projects are the documentary “One of the Miracles” (www.oneofthemiracles.com) and writing the music CD “XO” with Kathryn Dance / Lincoln Rhymes author Jeffery Deaver (www.jefferdeaverxomusic.com). He is currently writing a film script based on Peter Straub’s “Pork Pie Hat” for American Blackguard Entertainment (www.americanblackguard.com).

Truth Be Told

Families unfairly evicted from their suburban homes, dead bodies found in vacant houses, and a shocking confession in a notorious cold case! Top-notch reporter Jane Ryland digs up the truth on these heartbreaking stories—and discovers a big-bucks scheme and the surprising players who will stop at nothing, including murder, to keep their goals a secret. Financial scheming, the power of money, our primal need for home and family and love. What happens when what you believe is true turns out to be a lie?

 HankPhillippiRyan.com, on Twitter @HankPRyan and Facebook at HankPhillippiRyanAuthorPage.