The Grandfather Medicine

The author of more than 40 novels, Hager joins the mystery genre with a story set in her native state. Chief Mitchell Bushyhead, half-Cherokee and head of the four-man police force in Bushkin, Okla., gets his first homicide in 10 years when a prominent member of the Cherokee community is murdered. It's something of an event, not only because Bushkin's population is a mere 3000, but also because murder is strictly proscribed by Cherokee tradition and religion. Still, Bushyhead follows all leads and the reader learns much about Cherokee culture. Bushyhead and his assistant, Virgil Rabbit, focus their investigation on the prime suspect, Kingfisher Pigeon, brother of the dead man, who was married to a white woman and estranged from his people. Town leaders and spaced-out derelicts involved with drug trafficking also enter the picture. The momentum of solving the case helps to awaken Bushyhead, a grieving widower until now, to a new interest in his job, and in his daughter's pretty teacher. The prose here is serviceable and the puzzle smoothly concocted and solved. (Aug.)