The legendary American storyteller is back with another blockbuster novel featuring Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn and Sergeant Jim Chee. Former Navajo Tribal Police Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn comes out of retirement to help investigate what seems to be a trading post robbery. The simpleminded boy nailed for the crime is the cousin of an old colleague of Sergeant Jim Chee. He needs help, and Chee and his fiancee, Bernie Manuelito, decide to provide it. The key to proving the boy's innocence lies in a horrific airline disaster that occurred fifty years ago. Around the cliffs of the Grand Canyon, Chee must find the remains of one of the passengers who had handcuffed to his wrist an attache case filled with a fortune in diamonds - one of which seems to have turned up in the robbery. But with Hillerman it's never that simple. There are more people searching for the body of the long dead diamond dealer, and some of them are willing to kill to lay their hands upon the precious cache. Culminating deep in the canyon during a thunderous monsoon, it's a race to the finish to see who will survive, who will be brought to justice and who will finally unearth the Skeleton Man.