Oh dear. Is it fair to be disappointed in a book because it was not written by a different person? Probably not. I had hoped for another Hillerman, and it wasn't one. I might have thought it was all right if I hadn't been expecting something else. Maybe if I hadn't reread A Thief of Time. Maybe.
She committed a few crimes against series fiction that I find very difficult to excuse. She blatantly took her father's characters and wrote a sequel to one of his novels; given that, she had no business changing the original plot (and other events in the back story) to suit her convenience, did she think that no one would notice? And even less right to change the very nature of the characters which she stole. How dare she make Chee and Bernadette stupid? That was inexcusable.
Leaphorn, too. If she wanted to attach her father's fans, she probably should not have started by having someone walk up and shoot Leaphorn in the face at point-blank range - in front of a dozen or so of the area's top cops.
If she intends to continue writing murder mysteries, she needs to try it on her own instead of battening on Daddy's rep. Maybe actually reading Dad's books would help - then she could at least see how it is done - at least she could make her thefts consistent with their source.
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