BY MARTIN KICH Hillerman, Tony.  Skinwalkers.  New York: Harper, 1986. The impact of Tony Hillerman’s novels featuring Navajo policemen Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn has had few precedents in the history of the mystery-detective genre.  Although Chee and Leaphorn were not the first fictional Native American detectives, no previous novel or series featuring Native Americans…

BY MARTIN KICH Hammett, Dashiell.  The Maltese Falcon.  New York: Knopf, 1930. Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon was not the first hardboiled detective novel.  That distinction is commonly accorded to John Daly’s first Race Williams novel, Knights of the Open Palm (1923).  But The Maltese Falcon and its film adaptation gave the sub-genre international exposure…

POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Gardner, Erle Stanley.  The Case of the Crooked Candle.  New York: Morrow, 1944. Erle Stanley Gardner was not the first mystery-suspense novelist to create a protagonist who was a lawyer.  But his most famous creation, Perry Mason, has become the prototype for other criminal attorneys in the genre—so much so that…