Grandmother Spider, by James D. Doss

James D. Doss is the creator of detective Charlie Moon. In Grandmother Spider (2001), he is "Southern Ute Acting CHief of Police."



The Charlie Moon series takes place on the Southern Ute Reservation in Colorado.

Southern Ute tribal policeman Charlie Moon has a problem. It seems that, thanks to the imprudent squishing of a wayward spider, the giant spirit Grandmother Spider has risen from her cave below Navajo Lake and exacted revenge on humanity by snatching the research scientist William Pizinski and Tommy Tonompicket, the local carouser with whom he was drinking. Charlie knows this because the squisher was Sarah Frank, the 9-year-old ward of his elderly, shamanic, and altogether elsewhere aunt, Daisy Perika. And Daisy got it straight from a dwarfish spirit called a pitukupf.

The pitukupf half smiled, exposing jagged rows of yellowed teeth. He vigorously stirred the crooked stick in the embers under the apparition, kindling new flames. The dwarf ceremoniously lifted the helical baton like a conductor calling dark chords from an unseen orchestra. The glowing sparks swirled up the column of heated air... and the hideous image of the eight-legged creature followed. As it ascended, the grayish form took on the bright orange hue of the yellow flames beneath it. The apparition grew larger, the entrapped man struggled vainly in hope of release. And screamed piteously for someone to help him.

Before long, Charlie and his friend, Granite Creek Police Chief Scott Parris, are up to their gun belts in national security issues, mutilated bodies, hideous creatures roaming the countryside snatching sandwiches from the mouths of 80-year-olds, and the bizarre reappearance of the two missing and now-amnesiac tipplers.

Grandmother Spider is Charlie Moon's sixth mystery.

From Wikipedia:
The Southern Ute Indian Reservation lies in southwestern Colorado, USA, along the northern border of New Mexico. Its territory consists of land from three counties; in descending order of surface area they are La Plata County, Archuleta County, and Montezuma County. The reservation has a land area of 1,058.785 sq mi (2,742.24 km²) and a population of 11,159 as of the 2000 census. Its largest communities are Ignacio and Arboles.