Coyote Waits is a crime novel by American writer Tony Hillerman, the tenth in the Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee Navajo Tribal Police series, first published in 1990.

Ambitious historians and a Vietnamese family resettled in the US after the Vietnam War are intertwined in the crimes committed, as Chee and Leaphorn work together, sometimes going to places considered taboo by Navajo culture.

Chee hears Nez laughing on the radio about seeing the person who has been defacing local rock formations with paint, so takes his break.

Chee finds Hosteen Ashie Pinto walking on the road, holding an expensive bottle of brandy, and a gun recently shot; he is drunk and says he is ashamed, in Navajo.

Mrs. Keeyani describes her uncle's struggle with whiskey, which long ago led him to murder a man and a vow to stop drinking.

Leaphorn learns that money-short Pinto got a letter from history professor Tagert at McGinnis's trading post, unknown to his niece.

From Agent Kennedy, Leaphorn learns that the FBI investigation avoided talking to the owner of the vehicle that passed Jim Chee, because Huan Ji came to the US under the protection of the CIA.

Tapes made by Pinto tell a story indicating Cassidy and his fellow bandit died on the reservation decades ago.

Butch Cassidy and his Hole in the Wall and Wild Bunch gangs were real bandits in the US West in the late 19th and early 20th century.

The Short Mountain Trading Post is fictional, but meant to serve the far north and western part of the reservation where population is sparse.

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 76 geographical locations, real and fictional, mentioned in Coyote Waits.

It also featured Jimmy Herman, Alex Rice, Graham Greene, Sheila Tousey, Keith Carradine and Gary Farmer.

[7]Gish finds several dramatic climaxes in this novel: How Chee and Leaphorn, from their respective professional and personal motives and points of view, arrive at the truth about Nez's murder makes for some contrived but ingenious plotting.

The rewards in Mr. Hillerman's detective-Western hybrid include ample amounts of regional description (Albuquerque, northern New Mexico and the Navajo reservation), of Indian myth and of villainy.

And in this book, the author continues to prove himself one of the nation's most convincing and authentic interpreters of Navajo culture, as well as one of our best and most innovative modern mystery writers.

An extra payoff of Coyote Waits is an ever so light-handed but utterly convincing advocacy of Native American culture and an enchanting depiction of the spirit of the Southwest.

Apparently not ... he continues to write the same sort of gently impressive mystery fiction he has always written: a little slow, a little somber, yet gripping too — thanks to the steady uncoiling of grim secrets, the constant tension between Navajo mysticism and contemporary American values ... As always, Hillerman fills out the policework here with starkly memorable landscapes and firm nuances of character — like Jim Chee's ever-changing friendship with Janet Pete, the Navajo-born, city-trained lawyer who (by forgivable coincidence) winds up defending Ashie Pinto.

So, though Coyote Waits features one of the series' least dramatic plots, it's sturdy work from an incorruptible craftsman — and cause for quiet celebration.

Coyote Waits may be slighter and less interestingly developed than Talking God, and it is perhaps less satisfying to read because it becomes a demonstration of coincidence rather than dependent order.

"[9] Mark Schorr writing in the Chicago Tribune notes the plot elements of Coyote Waits: the legend of Coyote, the drunken shaman with the fantastic memory for tribal lore, the Southeast Asian teacher with links to the CIA in the Vietnam era, the FBI, competing researchers in academia, and Butch Cassidy.

He says that "The climax has a touch of deus ex machina, but Hillerman's strong suit of compelling characters in a fascinating setting make the novel a treat.

His mysteries allow a reader to feel that they`re not just reading a good yarn but also learning a great deal about Native American culture.