3.5**

Eh.

While not much of a mystery, 'Finding Moon' was certainly an Adventure! This was a historical novel of a period that I don't know much about-the Vietnam War. Moon Mathias, a down on his luck newspaper editor from Colorado is called upon to race to his mother's aid. When he arrives at her bedside, he learns that his recently deceased brother had a wife and daughter in Cambodia that Moon didn't know about. Not wanting to upset his mother in her failing health, he promises her that he will go to Manila and pick up the infant, where she is waiting for retrieval.

Along the way, things don't go exactly as planned. Moon finds himself leading a motley group of companions: a beautiful woman on a doomed quest, an elderly Asian gentleman, and a hot-headed Vietnamese sailor deep into territory controlled by the Viet Cong and the Khymer Rouge.

I COULD NOT put this book down! It had everything: suspense, romance, adventure, exotic locations, character development, you name it! Even if you haven't read any of Tony Hillerman's other books, I highly recommend that you give this one a try!

I rate this one a 'Gem' and encourage you to Read On!

first Tony Hillerman for me and I will read more. This one is not "dark Winds" genre. Moon Mathias is an editor at a small newspaper in Colorado. the year is 1975. The Viet Cong are about to overtake Saigon and major evacuations are occurring. Moon's brother (Rick) has a business in Vietnam as an aircraft mechanic and pilot. He has recently died. Moon gets a call that his mother has collapsed at the airport at LAX while waiting on a flight to Manila. Moon heads to LA to check on his mother and finds out that she is traveling to Manila to rescue Rick's infant daughter. This takes place during the fall of Saigon and the beginning of Pol Pot's Khmer Rogue genocide in Cambodia. side stories include Mr. Lum Lee trying to retrieve an urn with ancestor bones, Osa van Winjgarrden wanting to rescue her missionary brother and other somewhat shady characters that Rick had done business with in the past and present. for the most part there was very little eye rolling on my part as to believability. Moon was an interesting character even if I did not find him fully developed.

I picked this book up thinking that it was another of Hillerman’s Chee/Leaphorn books that I have enjoyed a number of times. It is very much not that. I still liked it a lot, maybe more.

This is the story of Moon Mathias who must travel to Vietnam right at the end of the Vietnam War to bring home the daughter of his deceased brother. The story is about the problems he faces as he struggles through a war-torn country to find the niece that he didn’t even know he had. Yet, as the title implies, this story isn’t about finding the little girl that he feels obligated to find. This story is about finding Moon.

Moon is a troubled man who has been living a life of poor decisions and shallow relationships for a long time and this story is a journey of how he finds himself and learns to be the person he always wanted to be.

There are times in our lives when trials make us into something different. We are forged through the fires of diversity into something new. Sometimes we come out something better.

Hillerman has written something special in this book, a story that explores what it means to be a person and how we gain compassion and maturity.

It’s kind of shockingly brutal and raw for a Tony Hillerman book which usually have an air of PG-rated murder mystery that avoids most of the gory details. This book isn’t overly violent but it does take place in a just barely post-war Vietnam and features a protagonist who is trying to come to terms with his own shallow life decisions up to that point.

Because of that it feels like something different and new and powerful. I really liked this book, it is possibly the best thing Hillerman ever wrote.

I didn't even realize that Tony Hillerman wrote novels that didn't involve the Navajo Tribal Police. But since I'm planning a trip to New Mexico this summer, I decided to run by the library and get another Tony Hillerman book that would transport me to the sacred lands of the Navajo. To my surprise, this book takes place in Southeast Asia during the last days of American military involvement in that area while American personnel are in the chaos of leaving. Moon Mathias's brother was killed in Vietnam and Moon is stunned when he receives a phone call telling him that his brother left behind an infant daughter. So off Moon goes to Vietnam and then into Cambodia. As the story unfolds, Mathias find that he is looking for himself as well as his brother's child.

Tony Hillerman takes the reader out of the Southwest and into the Far East. After his mother suffers a heart attack in the Los Angeles airport on her way to Manila, Moon Mathias is sent on a far ranging search for his late brother's daughter. Taking place during the last days of the Viet Nam War, Mathias travels from Manila, to the prison in Puerto Princesa, into the Mekong Delta, through Viet Nam as the Viet Cong are moving Southward and into the Killing Fields of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. This is not only an adventure tale, but also the story of forgiveness and acceptance.

It's a little tough to get started into this book. Although Hillerman is an expert at creating the personalities of the Navajo and Hopi Indians that inhabit the majority of his books, these characters lay a little flat and never seem to reach their full potential. Also, as masterfully as he creates the scenery of the stark desert, these lush landscapes leave the reader wanting more to aid in visualizing the countries where the characters travel.