i liked reading tony hillerman's works

i liked joe leaphorn and jim chee. i would certainly have liked our paths to cross one day. alas, they're just characters and i'll never get to meet them outside of my mind.

i was never too big on mysteries UNTIL i came across hillerman. then i started inching over that way a bit more.

so i'm sorry i will never get to meet you too tony, but thank you for your works.

Acclaimed Author Tony Hillerman Dies at 83

By AMANDA LEE MYERS

The Associated Press

PHOENIX -- Tony Hillerman, author of the acclaimed Navajo Tribal Police mystery novels and creator of two of the unlikeliest of literary heroes _ Navajo police officers Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee _ died Sunday of pulmonary failure. He was 83.

Hillerman's daughter, Anne Hillerman, said her father's health had been declining in the last couple years and that he was at Presbyterian Hospital in Albuquerque when he died at about 3 p.m.

Hillerman lived through two heart attacks and surgeries for prostate and bladder cancer. He kept tapping at his keyboard even as his eyes began to dim, as his hearing faded, as rheumatoid arthritis turned his hands into claws.

"I'm getting old," he declared in 2002, "but I still like to write."

Anne Hillerman said Sunday that her father was a born storyteller...........