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Notable Crime Fiction Writers

James D. Doss

by Robert C. Evans, Lois A. Marchino

Types of Plot: Native American private investigator based in the Southwest

Principal Series: Charlie Moon novels (1994-2012)

Principal Series Characters:

Charlie Moon, a Native American private investigator (Ute tribe) who lives in the Southwest.

Daisy Perika, Charlie’s aged aunt, a fount of traditional Native American wisdom

Scott Parris, a police officer and Charlie’s friend.

Contribution

James D. Doss, although not himself a Native American, is the author of the popular series of “Charlie Moon” novels in which Moon, a detective who belongs to the Ute tribe in the American Southwest, cooperates with his aunt, Daisy Perika (also a Ute), who is in tune with traditional ways of thinking and uses them to help Charlie solve crimes. In a rare interview (from 1999) with Art Taylor of the MysteryNet web site, Doss revealed important information about his life while also commenting usefully on his own works. According to Taylor, “Doss, a native of western Kentucky, first came to the Southwest 35 years ago, taking a job as an electrical engineer at Los Alamos National Laboratory,” near Sante Fe, New Mexico, where he “worked on projects ranging from biomedical electronics for cancer therapy to particle accelerators—‘what we used to call atom smashers,’ he explains.” Doss “officially retired from his engineering career in March 1999,” but continued to do some scientific research while also working on his novels. Doss explained to Taylor that he had “always been interested in—as we used to say when I was a kid—Indians.... Back in western Kentucky, I started finding flint arrowpoints and I got really interested in that. I joined three archeological societies.” In fact, he eventually “wanted to be an archeologist but went into engineering instead. When I started the first book, The Shaman Sings in 1994, I decided to write about southern Colorado and didn’t intend to write about Indians at all.” He “started with one minor character who’s a dispatcher in a police station, an Indian who has a real small part. Because of her, I decided I should learn something about the Utes.” He told Taylor that he “started reading about Ute shamanism and I learned about a creature called the pitukupf (a mythical character who serves as an oracle to shamans) and this absolutely blew me away.” The more Utes he met and talked to, and the more he studied their culture, the more fascinated he became. His decision to make them the center of his novels was at that point an easy one.

Biography

James D. Doss was born on March 9, 1939, in Reading, Pennsylvania. After his family moved south, he later attended Kentucky Wesleyan University, where he took a B.S. degree in 1964 before heading west, studying at the University of New Mexico, where he earned an M.S. degree in 1969. By then he had already been working as a staff member at Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, NM for five years. He also taught adjunct courses in radiology and surgery at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine. According to encyclopedia.com, Doss was the “[h]older of fourteen patents in [the] fields of electronics, biomedical engineering, and automotive engineering.” He “[d]eveloped [a] radio-frequency electric current method for [the] thermal treatment of tumors,” among other scientific achievements. He began publishing mystery novels when he was fifty-five and continued turning out books in his Charlie Moon series until 2012. An Episcopalian, he was 73 when he passed away on May 17, 2012, and was survived by his wife, two sons, and six grandchildren.

Analysis

Some of Doss’s comments in his interview with Art Taylor are relevant to any analysis of his fiction. He obviously admired the Ute people he met and attempted to depict the tribe respectfully and without revealing any secrets concerning traditional tribal knowledge. He told Taylor that the Utes he had talked with had been “very polite, friendly, sociable people with a great sense of humor,” and some had told him that they enjoyed his novels. He added, however, “I suspect they’re like my other friends. The ones who don’t like my books probably won’t tell me.” He recounted one incident when he

was up there doing research on the sun dance, [and] there was a gentleman who had been assigned to be the sheriff of the sun dance, which meant he was supposed to keep order; he didn’t arrest people or anything but he made sure that people obeyed all the rules. Obviously, he was a good source of information. I had explained to him already that I was a writer, but at one point he got concerned and said, “You really shouldn’t be telling what we’re doing here.” I became apprehensive right away. Then, the more he talked, he said, “Now when you tell what we’re doing, be sure you get it right.” So he gave me two diametrically opposed bits of instruction. I decided to tell it and tell it as right as I could. Now that does not mean—especially when you’re writing about something like the sun dance—that you do everything accurately.

Having been told inadvertently by another member of the tribe how to steal the power of the dance when it was being performed, Doss “promised them that I would never reveal it. So when I wrote the story, I had to invent my own technique for stealing the power. Yet it had to be something that within the culture could be reasonably plausible, something that when they saw it, the Utes wouldn’t simply laugh at.” Respect for the Utes, combined with a deep curiosity about their culture, is obviously one trait of Doss’s fiction.

Asked by Taylor how he would compare and contrast his own “Native American mysteries” with similar and better-known books by Tony Hillerman, he replied, “I could smile a little bit and say, ‘Well, my writing needs to be a lot better.’ But one thing that’s different is that Mr. Hillerman really doesn’t write about mysticism among the Navajo. He writes about religion in a very authoritative way, but he really stays away from mysticism, and I don’t at all. It’s a central theme.” He continued: “Charlie Moon doesn’t believe a word of it; he’s more like a younger, less traditional Ute. And he has an aunt who believes all of it. And I find that a lot of fun, to have these drastic attitudes about mysticism.” Doss agreed with Taylor that his own books contain more humor than Hillerman’s, remarking that the Utes “historically have been known as a people who really appreciate humor,” thus defying the stereotype that Native Americans are always serious and solemn. At the same time, he added, “Charlie faces some serious moral questions”—the kinds of questions Doss tried to explore in his own novels.

The Witch’s Tongue

In The Witch’s Tongue (2004), Ute tribal investigator and licensed private detective Charlie Moon finds himself involved in several criminal cases at once, but maybe they are all connected. There seems to be no end to mystery on the Southern Ute reservation, including stolen “corpse powder,” a grave without a body in it (or perhaps first one and then another), and strange visions of flying spirits around a black protruding shelf of granite called the Witch’s Tongue.

In the opening scene, Jacob Gourd Rattle is digging what appears to be a burial spot in the remote canyons and mesas of Southern Colorado. His wife, called Kicks Dog, reports that her husband is missing. Rich and cantankerous old Jane Cassidy wants to hire Charlie to recover stolen rare coins and precious cameos worth millions of dollars. An Apache attacks a white police officer, and the officer bites off his attacker’s nose. A rotting corpse is found in a van parked in a garage. Charlie Moon’s poker buddy, Ralph Biggs, is shot while Charlie is standing beside him. As though such problems were not enough, the woman Charlie is about to propose to walks out on him. Much of the solution to the crimes is given at the end of the novel via a videotaped interview with one of the suspects—but Charlie knew the solution long before that.

Reclusive old shaman Daisy Perika, Charlie Moon’s aunt, is involved in the action, as she is in other books in the series, and she and Charlie and the local priest, a friend of Daisy’s who is about to retire, get the final scene. It is a beautiful and touching conclusion to the novel, a memorable commentary on life and death.

Further Reading

1 

“Doss, James D(aniel) 1939-.” Encyclopedia.com (n.d.): n.p., https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/doss-james-daniel-1939. A brief overview of Doss’s career with many helpful quotations from reviewers of his books.

2 

“James Doss.” Los Alamos Monitor (May 22-23, 2012): n.p., http://tinyurl.com/46edczyh. An obituary from in Doss’s local newspaper.

3 

Drew, Bernard A. 100 Most Popular Contemporary Mystery Authors: Biographical Sketches and Bibliographies. Santa Barbara: Libraries Unlimited, 2011. Contains a brief overview.

4 

Review of A Dead Man’s Tale, by James D. Doss. Kirkus Reviews 78, no. 20 (October 15, 2010). “A droll fandango between a man who hires an assassin for two bits and a man who predicts his own demise.... Top-flight work from Doss,...who can outplot most anybody and give cold-blooded miscreants a case of the giggles. Are you listening, awards committees?”

5 

Review of A Dead Man’s Tale, by James D. Doss. Publishers Weekly 257, no. 38 (September 27, 2010): 40. At one point, “events blindside Moon and Parris, setting in motion a denouement surprising enough to make it worth tolerating the author’s myriad digressions and annoying stylistic quirks.”

6 

Review of The Old Gray Wolf by James D. Doss. Kirkus Reviews 80, no. 19 (October 1, 2012): 2206-2207. Mentions the book’s suspense, humor, and use of red herrings.

7 

Review of The Old Gray Wolf by James D. Doss. Publishers Weekly . 259, no. 36 (September 3, 2012): 50-51. Referring to Doss’s “offbeat western series,” the reviewer says that “Doss spins out a slight plot...with a folksy, humorously digressive storytelling style as old-school as his western lawmen heroes. Some readers will find it hokey, but Doss fans will enjoy a final chance to explore a world that offers glimpses of real-life Ute culture as well as violence that falls somewhere between Cormac McCarthy and Tex Avery.”

8 

Stoecklein, Mary, Native American Mystery Writing: Indigenous Investigations. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2019. Explores its topics from various perspectives, including postcolonial points of view.

9 

Taylor, Art. “An Interview James D. Doss, Author of the Charlie Moon Mysteries.” Mysterynet.com (1999): n.p., https://web.archive.org/web/20100510043834/http://www.mysterynet.com/doss/author.shtml.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Evans, Robert C., and Lois A. Marchino. "James D. Doss." Notable Crime Fiction Writers, edited by Robert C. Evans, Salem Press, 2021. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=NCFW_0049.
APA 7th
Evans, R. C., & Marchino, L. A. (2021). James D. Doss. In R. C. Evans (Ed.), Notable Crime Fiction Writers. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Evans, Robert C. and Marchino, Lois A. "James D. Doss." Edited by Robert C. Evans. Notable Crime Fiction Writers. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2021. Accessed December 14, 2025. online.salempress.com.