Give me a historical mystery set in the American Southwest and I am a happy reader. Add in real folks like Frank Lloyd Wright and John Wayne and I am over the moon. Of course it helps that the writers know the area and the customs of the Navajo and Ute nations know how to write well.

Yazzie Goldman is three-quarters Navajo and one-quarter Jewish. He works as security on the railroad but when the book starts he and his wife have been vacationing in Chicago. Even though he is off duty when he sees a tough guy hassling an old man he intervenes. Turns out the old man is Frank Lloyd Wright and he is on his way to Taliesin West in Scottsdale with the plans for the Guggenheim Museum on his person. The tough guy hassling him is muscle for a gangster to whom Wright owes twenty thousand dollars. Yazzie agrees to protect Wright all the way to Scottsdale but little does he know that will bring not just gangsters but the FBI (who think Wright is unAmerican) and unscrupulous architects after the Guggenheim plans into his life. Trying to get away from all these interests Yazzie takes Wright on a road trip up to Monument Valley where John Ford is shooting Fort Apache. John Wayne is one of the stars and he is interested in Wright. That comes in handy when all those people after Wright show up on the movie set.

I am a big fan of Frank Lloyd Wright although I have never been in any of his buildings. I hope to rectify that soon by touring Taliesin West when we are next in Arizona. Meantime I have another book about Wright, Loving Frank, on my bookshelf and I am looking forward to reading that soon. I also really liked this detective. There is an earlier book, The Darkness Rolling, which I want to read and then I will be seeking out more books I suspect. ( )