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Father John O'Malley is called the Indian Priest. When a tape recording of an electronically altered voice is left for him to hear, he's not sure what to make of it. The voice mentions revenge for an old battle between the Arapaho and Shoshone Indian Tribes. He finally figures that the tape has to do with the Bates Battle where in 1874, some Shoshone warriors led a Captain Bates on a massacre of the small village of the remaining Arapaho people. When Father O'Malley travels to the site to look around, he finds three men dead, posed in the way that old photos showed how the Arapaho looked when they died during the Bates Battle. Suddenly Father O'Malley is shot at. When the police arrive they discover that the three dead are all Shoshone young men, students at the local college. Father O'Malley is fearful that this will renew the bad feelings between the tribes who have been living together in a strained peace for the last 100 years. Meanwhile, Vicky Holden's new law firm is in trouble. Her partner and significant other, Adam Lone Eagle only wants to represent the larger jobs for the Indian Nation. Vicky can't seem to help herself when her old clients, mostly poor, call on her for help. One repeat client is Frankie Montana, a young Arapaho man known for fighting and chemical abuse who has been charged with beating up three Shoshone men. When it's later discovered that the dead men found on the Bates battlefield were the same three who had fought with Frankie, he becomes the easy suspect in their murders. For reasons Vicky can't understand she's compelled to fight for Frankie, though he couldn't be a more self-centered repulsive person and by doing so her professional relationship with Adam Lone Eagle is harmed. But when she suspects that Adam's dinners with a fellow lawyer in town, a young, beautiful woman, is more than business, all of her memories of her first husband's betrayal torments her and she suspects Adam of the worst. The tension mounts on the reservation between the two tribes as the police and Father O'Malley do their best to investigate. To learn everything he can, Father O'Malley even speaks to a visiting professor, an author of a historical book on the Bates Massacre. When young, pregnant, and white Edie Bradbury goes to Father O'Malley and tells him she's the girlfriend of one of the three men killed, she points the finger of guilt at an ex-boyfriend, a white supremacist who was violently jealous of her relationship with the other man. Father O'Malley reports this to the police, but he puts himself on the line to investigate. As he is trying to get to the truth and console the murdered victim's families Father O'Malley is having a hard time. His taste for alcohol is calling to him and his new assistant, a priest just out of rehab, has been visiting bars again. I liked a lot about EYE OF THE WOLF. Though this is the 11th book of the series and we hear a lot of the back-story that we missed, I found that this book stands on its own well. In addition, the main characters, deeply moral people, human but with their own rules of conduct that they will make themselves stick to, became very real to me and I found myself caring about them. I liked the history and the mystery in the story and I enjoyed my visit to the reservation immensely. There were a few fatal flaws in the mystery itself. I won't go into the details, but unfortunately, the main clue that was used to break the case simply isn't true and though the characters keep up the chatter to center the readers' minds on only the clues that support the main thrust of the book, mystery fans will be thinking of the basic questions asked in any murder and may probably solve the case early. Yet, because it was so well written, I still enjoyed the book. EYE OF THE WOLF by Margaret Coel has a lot going for it and I recommend it highly.
Reviewed by Sharon Katz, August 2005
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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