Tony Hillerman, author of 18 novels about Navajo Tribal police officers Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee, set in the Four Corners area of New Mexico and Arizona, died Sunday of pulmonary failure.

The 83-year-old Hillerman had already lived through two heart attacks and surgeries for prostrate and bladder cancer, and was still writing. From the AP obituary:

"I'm getting old," he declared in 2002, "but I still like to write."

Anne Hillerman said Sunday that her father was a born storyteller.

"He had such a wonderful, wonderful curiosity about the world," she said. "He could take little details and bring them to life, not just in his books, but in conversation, too."