I've read quite a few of Tony Hillerman novels, but I don't think I had read any that wasn't set in the Four Corners and the world of the Navajo Tribal Police. This one, Finding Moon, is set in 1975 South East Asia. Moon Mathias, a Colorado newspaper journalist, finds out that his brother Ricky, who ran a helicopter company in Cambodia, has died in a crash. Then his mother has a heart attack en route to Manila - turns out that Ricky had a baby daughter, and she was going to bring the child to the US. With her in the hospital, Moon travels to the Philippines, Vietnam, and Cambodia, just as the US are losing the war, and Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge are taking over Cambodia. It's not a murder mystery like most of Hillerman's other novels, but it's a very gripping story, and I kept thinking about it during the day, when I was away from the book. What would happen next? When did the Americans start evacuating? What date was the fall of Saigon? And of course they all thought the reports of the Khmer Rouge killings were exaggerated - it really was just too fantastical, a country killing off all their academics, city people and white collar workers. Great job, setting it all in context.
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