A Thief of Time is a crime novel by American writer Tony Hillerman, the eighth in the Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee Navajo Tribal Police series, first published in 1988.

The story involves the lure of the thousand-year-old Anasazi ruins, a missing anthropologist, a stolen backhoe, people who steal ancient pots on reservation land and human ambition.

Chee is pulled into the case by the stolen backhoe, while Leaphorn, now a widower, follows the trail of ancient pots bought and sold.

[3] In this novel, "it is the sense the author imparts of the sparseness, the spaciousness, the silence, the poverty and the ancient sullen Indian presence in this haunted wild country where the action occurs.

BLM agent Thatcher takes him along on a call to talk with a woman accused of stealing Anasazi relics from protected land, a thief of time.

The buyer in New York City has the form showing the exact place the pot was found, so Leaphorn meets Richard DuMont to get that description.

Slick Nakai's brother describes the same site to Chee, who then finds the exact locations by tracking where both Elliot and Dr Friedman-Bernal made applications to dig, each for their own research goals.

Chee learns that Elliot was not in Washington DC the day Dr Friedman left for her weekend away; instead he rented a helicopter, as he has again done.

In his 2011 book Tony Hillerman's Navajoland: Hideouts, Haunts, and Havens in the Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee Mysteries, author Laurance D. Linford has listed the following 89 geographical locations, real and fictional, mentioned in A Thief of Time.

[1][5][6] Emily Clements, in a 2012 essay, wrote: "One of Tony Hillerman's strengths as a writer is his ability to make what would otherwise appear to be a foreign culture seem familiar".

In this case, it is the sense the author imparts of the sparseness, the spaciousness, the silence, the poverty and the ancient sullen Indian presence in this haunted wild country where the action occurs.

It brings back not only Leaphorn and Chee but several of the supporting characters from A Thief of Time, with a case that continues from its loose ends.

Time has passed, as Chee is married to Bernadette Manuelito (introduced in later novels in the series, e.g., The Wailing Wind), who features in solving the case.

[8][9] In 2004 it was adapted as a TV film by PBS starring Adam Beach as Chee, Wes Studi as Leaphorn and Gary Farmer as Capt.