J Michael Orenduff Books in Order

J. Michael Orenduff grew up in El Paso, Texas, in a home close enough to the Rio Grande that he later joked he could throw a tortilla into Mexico like a Frisbee. That border setting, along with years spent around New Mexico, gave him a feel for the landscapes, food, history, and mixed communities that return in his fiction.

His route to writing took a long turn through higher education. While earning a master's degree at the University of New Mexico, he spent summers as a volunteer teacher at a nearby pueblo. He later earned a doctorate from Tulane University and began a career as a professor.

Orenduff taught at colleges and universities in the United States and abroad. Over time, he also served as an academic dean, a vice president, and a university president, including president of New Mexico State University.

It was a lot of meetings before the mysteries.

After taking early retirement from higher education, Orenduff turned his attention to fiction. His best-known work is the Pot Thief series, a set of New Mexico mysteries that mixes archaeology, local history, philosophical detours, and a generous amount of dry humor.

The series begins with The Pot Thief Who Studied Pythagoras, which introduces pottery dealer Hubert, or Hubie, Schuze. He has a complicated relationship with the law, an eye for old ceramics, and a habit of getting pulled into crimes he would rather avoid. A museum theft and a murder quickly put his resourcefulness to the test.

Later books send Hubie after stolen relics in The Pot Thief Who Studied Ptolemy, into a strange collector's dangerous world in The Pot Thief Who Studied Einstein, and through mysteries tied to Santa Fe kitchens, Taos, university life, and the history of Billy the Kid. The Pot Thief Who Studied Georgia O'Keeffe and The Pot Thief Who Studied Edward Abbey show how broadly Orenduff uses New Mexico's art, places, and past as part of the puzzle.

New Mexico is never just scenery in these books.

Desert roads, old buildings, museums, restaurants, campus offices, and pottery shops all matter to the action. The stories also return to questions about ownership, preservation, cultural inheritance, and the elaborate excuses a smart person can make when trouble looks tempting.

Orenduff's mysteries have earned honors including a Lefty Award, an Epic Award, and a New Mexico Book Award. But the lasting appeal is more down to earth: Hubie is an unusual amateur detective, the cases have real stakes, and the books make room for friendship, food, arguments, and the odd philosophical conversation while the clues come together.