Margaret Coel's Father John O'Malley series is a winner. Her characters are strong and realistic, and Father John himself is one of the most endearing sleuths I've come across in this genre for quite some time. In this book Father John and his lawyer friend Vicky become involved with some really bad dudes. They both see that their beloved Wind River Reservation is facing a terrible danger, and it is up to them to avert it. One of the nicest things about these books is the nice mix that Coel pens between the white world and the world of the Reservation. As we read we see that there is some tension there, but these two cultures do mange to coexist together. I can't wait to read the next one.

Margaret Coel has said she has her characters face great challenges in order to see what they're made of. In "The Ghost Walker," her second mystery in a series, Father John O'Malley and Vicky Holden definitely get put through the wringer, which was a bit torturous for me to read, since I have already come to care about these characters so much.

But Father John and Vicky rise to meet their respective challenges with dignity, grace and humanity. Vicky struggles to save her drug-addicted daughter from a group of men who could be killers, while Father John combats plans to shut down his beloved Jesuit mission while wrestling with his own feelings for Vicky and his alcoholism.

As far as the mystery goes, Coel once again makes it clear who the bad guys are early in the novel. Normally, this would kill any suspense, but Coel has a gift for making you want to keep reading even when she lets you in on her secrets. You want to see how all the pieces will finally fit together, and you want to further probe the motives of the villains who bring such chaos to other people's lives.

"The Ghost Walker" wasn't just a page-turning mystery. It was a top-notch, character-driven novel with two protagonists you really want to see triumph in the end.

In this book Father John O'Malley discovers a dead body beside the road. His credibility takes a beating when the police return and the body is gone. At this point, Father John makes it his mission to find the body and discover who has died. When a commercial developer threatens to take over Father O'Malley's mission and turn it into a recreation center, he becomes distraught and is tempted to turn to alcohol, which has been the bane of his existence for many years. Instead, he teams up with Arapaho attorney Vicky Holden, and tries to solve the murder while helping Vicky with her drug-addicted daughter, Susan. This book, while not as compelling as the first book of the series, "The Eagle Catcher", is still a good read.

Ghost Walker is the story of Father O'Malley a Jesuit priest who works at St. Francis on the Arapaho reservation, and in his free time solves crime. Father O'Malley is a likeable character, with two problems: he has just discovered a body in a ditch by the side of the road, and two: he has financial trouble and is having difficulty making ends meet.

I wanted to like Ghost Walker, because it contained some of my favorite fictional elements: Native American Characters and Mystery, but the writing was inconsistent, and I really couldn't decide whether this book was supposed to be a 'cozy' mystery or hard-edged murder mystery, as a result it was neither, and the story suffered as a result.

Pros: Unique characters, interesting setting, some Native American Lore described.

Cons: O'Malley interfered WAY too much in Police Investigations. Police AND FBI, seemed to sit by the phone, waiting for O'Malley to call. (Yeah, right.) Substance and Alcohol Abuse themes felt a little bit heavy-handed for this reader, and I felt a bit sermonized to. The ending left me saying: Where's the mystery?

Overall, this was an okay read. I would have liked it better if it had been either a hard-edged mystery or a cozy. As both, it was rather weak, and it left me with a blah, ambivalent feeling.

After consuming everything Hillerman has written, and learning something new about Native American culture from each book, and after Hillerman's squib on the Dust jacket, my expectations were set so far above what this trite book delivered that even two stars seems kind... As a 1/8 Arapaho [& 1/8 Blackfoot] i had hoped to learn something about their life. The characterizations were also paper thin, including both the male and female protagonists... and the denouement was telegraphed for miles... ergo, even as a mystery/suspense novel, this one flunked.