(Photo is “Spooky Woods” by GypsyMist.)

Do you consider crime thrillers and murder mysteries good reading fare for the Halloween season? 

I do.

And I’m glad that we’re in a time when crime fiction by Indigenous American writers is increasingly recognized and celebrated. Here’s a terrific article by Lakota author David Heska Wanbli Weiden for CrimeReads: “Why Indigenous Crime Fiction Matters.” He also contributed this useful reading list for The Strand: “Seven Essential Native American Crime Novels.”

Speaking of David Heska Wanbli Weiden, I read, thoroughly enjoyed, and highly recommend his gripping 2020 novel Winter Counts, which is a (to borrow the official description) “groundbreaking thriller about a vigilante on a Native American reservation who embarks on a dangerous mission to track down the source of a heroin influx.” A tense and engrossing read. 

And speaking of his essay on “Why Indigenous Crime Fiction Matters,” I was very glad to see Cherokee novelist John Rollin Ridge mentioned front and center. Earlier this year in my monthly “Looking Back on Genre History” segment on the StarShipSofa podcast, on Episode 628, I discussed how we can trace parts of Batman’s origin back to John Rollin Ridge and his fiction. 

(Photo by Yours Truly.)

Perhaps my favorite discovery this year is the wonderful Cash Blackbear mystery/crime series, including Murder on the Red River (2017) and Girl Gone Missing (2019), by White Earth Nation author Marcie R. Rendon. Set during the Vietnam Conflict, these books follow 19-year-old Cash Blackbear – “aged-out foster child, girl pool shark, truck driver from Minnesota’s White Earth reservation” – who asks questions, has dreams, and regularly helps out her friend Wheaton, the cop who is her family by choice rather than blood, as he solves crimes. These books deliver on mood and atmosphere while also telling difficult, important, meaningful stories.

Here is one of Cash Blackbear’s vivid and haunting dreams:

Cash pulled herself up and out of her window. Her heart beat in her ears and she shivered uncontrollably. Her eyes darted left and right as she ran barefoot across the damp ground. She reached the plowed field. Her foot sank into the cold, damp dirt. When she tried to pull her foot up, her front leg sank further into the earth. She threw herself forward, clawing with bare hands, hearing the heavy, labored breathing of the person chasing her. Fear forced her from her body so that she was soon flying above herself. She looked down to see her body stretched out in the mud below, buried to her knees, arms flailing, hair catching in her hands. Instantly, the body in the field changed from herself struggling to two paler, longer-legged, blonde women. The young women looked up at Cash. They mouthed, “Help me, Help me.”

- from Marcie R. Rendon, Girl Gone Missing (2019)

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