Joe Leaphorn

Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn is a fictional character created by the twentieth-century American mystery writer Tony Hillerman.

He attended college at Arizona State University, where he completed a master's degree in anthropology, writing a thesis paper (Dance Hall of the Dead).

In the first three novels of the series, he has no staff; he reports to Captain Largo in the Navajo Tribal Police and works with officers of other tribes and often with federal investigative agencies.

In Talking God, the year following the death of his wife, Leaphorn has a Blessing Way ceremony done for him by Jim Chee, an event that both find beneficial.

In his career he works in a number of locations, including a brief stint training at the FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. Five months before The Fallen Man, Leaphorn retires, and as part of the plot he gets a commission as a private investigator.

In each of the following Leaphorn and Jim Chee work together: Skinwalkers, A Thief of Time and Coyote Waits were each adapted for television as part of the American Mystery!