Ella Clah

8 primary works • 16 total works

Blackening Song

by Aimee Thurlo

Published 1 June 1995

Death Walker

by Aimee Thurlo and David Thurlo

Published 1 June 1996

Solving her father's murder taught FBI agent Ella Clah a great deal about herself and her people, the Dineh, or Navajo. She isn't sure she believes everything she experienced while tracking down the Navajo witches who killed her father, but she now knows that there is more to the world than can be explained by her FBI training and forensic science. Now a special investigator with the tribal police on the Navajo Reservation, Ella is stunned when one of the Dineh's "living treasures" - people who hold and teach the cultural and religious wisdom of the tribe - is brutally murdered. Ritual signs at the murder scene seem to point to skinwalkers, or Navajo witches, but Ella thought they'd all been killed or captured. Ella has too many suspects and too few clues, even after other old wise ones are found dead. Despite help from the Navajo pathologist, Carolyn Roanhorse, a woman as much an outsider within the tribe as Ella herself, Ella makes little progress. To make matters worse, Peterson Yazzie, head of the skinwalkers, has escaped, and once again stalks the Clah family. Illusion and ritual duel with police procedures and science as Ella strives to find out who is stealing the mind and heart of the Navajo people.

Bad Medicine

by Aimee Thurlo

Published 1 November 1997

Formerly an FBI agent, Ella Clah has returned to the reservation and is now a special investigator with the Navajo police force. When the daughter of Senator Yellowhair is killed in a suspicious car accident, the senator accuses Ella and the tribe's medical examiner, Dr. Carolyn Roanhorse, of tampering with evidence and falsifying the autopsy results. The fact that the young woman's body is mutilated and that Dr. Roanhorse's samples disappear doesn't help the mood on the reservation, already tense due to conflict between whites and Indians at the Navajo-owned mine. An outbreak of meningitis further disrupts Navajo life as the reservation's inhabitants must decide whether or not to he vaccinated. Those who follow the old ways reject modern medicine, preferring to trust in the tribe's hataalis, but many attend vaccination clinics - only to flee when Navajos begin dying from an unknown disease. Ella is convinced that somehow all these things tie together, but finding the connections is difficult and dangerous. Threats come from all sides, and clues lead Ella to suspect that Navajo witches may somehow be involved, putting not only her life but her soul in danger.

Enemy Way

by Aimee Thurlo

Published 1 September 1998

Mourning Dove

by Aimee Thurlo and David Thurlo

Published 21 March 2006

What did the dead man know?

Jimmy Blacksheep, a Navajo member of the New Mexico National Guard recently returned from Iraq, is killed in what appears to be a carjacking gone wrong. But when Navajo Police Special Investigator Ella Clah receives a mysterious package in the mail, she begins to suspect that Jimmy's death is part of something larger.

Ella finds she must use Navajo lore, not FBI cryptography, to decode Jimmy's message. Tantalizing clues link Jimmy's death to his military service but what could the medic have seen in Iraq that would make him a target for murder back home?

Ella's personal life seems just as complicated as her case. Her mother, Rose Destea, marries her long-time beau, Herman Cloud. Then the father of Ella's daughter, Dawn, asks for a change in custody arrangements that will reduce Ella to a weekend mother a much easier fit with her workload but something that will take a terrible toll on her heart."

Turquoise Girl

by Aimee Thurlo and David Thurlo

Published 3 April 2007

Earthway

by Aimee Thurlo and David Thurlo

Published 27 October 2009

Ghost Medicine

by Aimee Thurlo and David Thurlo

Published 12 November 2013

Former Navajo Police officer Harry Ute's body is found in an isolated part of the Navajo Reservation, rumoured to be skinwalker country. This makes Navajo Police Special Investigator Ella Clah's job much harder - no one wants to speak to her for fear of incurring the wrath of the Navajo witches. Harry's latest P.I. case involves tracking down property stolen from the county. This leads Ella to work with county Detective Dan Nez. Ella doesn't trust Nez but can't deny her growing attraction to him. The murder and thefts turn out to be the tip of an iceberg. Previously unknown Navajo artifacts are being offered for sale, indicating a hidden dig somewhere on the Reservation. As danger mounts, Ella worries that her latest case might also become her last.

Wind Spirit

by Aimee Thurlo, David Thurlo, Aima(c)E Thurlo, and Aim E Thurlo

Published 17 April 2004

Changing Woman

by Aimee Thurlo, David Thurlo, and Aima(c)E Thurlo

Published 18 March 2002

Coyote's Wife

by Aimee Thurlo and David Thurlo

Published 30 September 2008

Never-Ending-Snake

by Aimee Thurlo and David Thurlo

Published 31 August 2010

Tracking Bear

by Aimaee Thurlo and David Thurlo

Published 1 April 2003

White Thunder

by Aimee Thurlo and David Thurlo

Published 1 April 2005

Shooting Chant

by Aimee Thurlo and David Thurlo

Published 15 March 2001

Black Thunder

by Aimee Thurlo and David Thurlo

Published 25 October 2011

"A construction crew found the first body. The cops found three more, in a cluster that lay on both sides of the border of the Navajo Reservation. Because some of the bodies were buried outside the Rez, Navajo Police Special Investigator Ella Clah and her team must work a delicate joint investigation with the New Mexico police. Identifying the dead isn't easy--some had been buried for years--and at first the cases look to be nothing but dead ends. Then one of the bodies turns out to be that of a missing man who was believed to have embezzled funds from his construction firm and suspicions focus on the man's partner. With no obvious links between any of the corpses and the anniversary of their deaths fast approaching, Ella feels frustrated by the investigation's lack of progress. Unless they can find what connects these victims, someone else may soon be killed. Ella's ability to concentrate is battered by worries about her teenage daughter, who has been skipping school, and her mother, who is cooking up a storm, a sure sign that trouble is brewing in the household. Black Thunder, an Ella Clah novel, is a police procedural mystery that should appeal to all readers. "--