Hunting Badger is a crime novel by American writer Tony Hillerman, the fourteenth in the Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee Navajo Tribal Police series, first published in 1999.

"[4] Sophisticated robbers shoot the security guards at the Ute Casino, turn off the electricity and then steal the cash bagged and ready to be picked up for deposit to the bank.

Cap Stoner is killed outright, while young Teddy Bai is severely wounded, but immediately suspected by the FBI as the "inside man" for the robbery.

Chee and his friend Cowboy Dashee revisit the site where the escape vehicle was found with two sets of footprints, and visit the Timms place nearby.

After talking with Leaphorn, he calls on the head of the EPA project at the airport that is using a helicopter to scan for uranium, which is usually found in or near old coal mines.

They agree to an extra bit of flying, and Chee finds the long mine shaft likely built by Mormons in the prior century, since abandoned, not visible from the search area, and once used by the original Ironhand.

Besides the murdering thief of the current story, he reflects on the history in the 19th century, when Utes joined with the U.S. Army under Kit Carson to put the Navajos down and ultimately to drive them out of their homeland.

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 48 geographical locations, real and fictional, mentioned in Hunting Badger.

[6] Kirkus Reviews finds this a lesser work from Hillerman, but pleasing, and with the best tricks at the end: On May 4, 1998, a Colorado police officer was shot and killed when he pulled over a stolen water truck.

here reimagines the crime as a Ute Casino holdup that leaves the security chief dead and one of his rent-a-cops, whom the police wrongheadedly assume to have been the inside man, wounded.

As for the prickly Sergeant Chee, he has to contend with physical problems as well as with the end of one romance and the beginning of another--not to mention the very real possibility of being picked off by a sniper during the search for the men who robbed a casino owned by the Ute tribe.

In a rare author's note, Hillerman talks about an actual 1998 case in which the FBI turned the killing of a Colorado police officer into a gigantic fiasco.

The shadow of that failed investigation hangs over the search in this book, leading to many anti-FBI jibes (If the Federal Bureau of Ineptitude says it, it must be true, another retired cop tells Leaphorn).

But there is one splendid helicopter ride into Gothic Creek Canyon that should speed up the calmest heart, several new insights into the mysteries of Navajo culture and a story with enough twists and surprises to make readers glad they checked in.

[4]Nicholas Allison remarks that all the cardinal virtues of Hillermn's writing are evident, including pellucid prose and characters who seem to rise off the page: The marvellous Hunting Badger is Tony Hillerman's 13th novel featuring Navajo Tribal Police officers Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee.

Here the two cops (who appeared in separate books early on but whose paths now routinely cross) are working two angles of the same case: Catching the right-wing militiamen who pulled off a violent heist at an Indian casino.

Hillerman serves up plenty of action and enough plot twists to keep readers off balance, leading up to a satisfyingly tense climax in which Leaphorn and Chee stalk a killer in his hideout.

But through it all, the cardinal Hillerman virtues are in evidence: Economical, pellucid prose; a panoply of Indian-country characters who seem to rise right up off the page; vivid evocations of the Southwest's bleak beauty and rich insights into Navajo life and culture.

In a world teeming with "sense of place" mysteries--set in Seattle, Alaska, the Arizona desert or Chicago--it can be a shock to return to Hillerman, who started it all, and realise just how superior he is to the rest of the pack.

and Jim Chee are united again, this time in an effort to catch heavily armed right-wing militiamen who robbed an Indian casino and who may or may not be involved in a previous mishandled manhunt.

Insights into Leaphorn's and Chee's personalities are unveiled against the backdrop of the scenic Southwest's beauty, other interesting characters, and peeks into Navajo life.

The tale, which is well-read by George Guidall, also contains plenty of action and surprises, along with dynamic central characters struggling to live in the modern world without sacrificing their culture.

Dretzka explains that "Hillerman stages the manhunt in some of the most picturesque country in the Southwest and, as usual, easily transports the reader to the edge of a high mesa from which to observe the mayhem.