Day of the Dead: A Novel of Suspense [Audiobook, Unabridged] [Audio Cassette]

J. A. Jance (Author), Tim Jerome (Narrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 2004

A shocking and electrifying thriller from this New York Times bestselling author For more than thirty years the case has remained stone cold -- the brutal murder of a local Papago girl, her butchered body found stuffed into a large cooler left on the side of Highway 86. For Brandon Walker, retired Sheriff of Pima County, Arizona, involvement comes via The Last Chance, an exclusive group of former cops and forensic experts who look into unsolved murders. A forgotten homicide in the Arizona desert is only the beginning of the nightmare that is about to ensnare this diligent ex-cop and his family; for Brandon Walker is the only one still alive who can unravel a blood knot of terror and obsession that will free a dark truth more frightening than he ever imagined.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Jance's third suspense thriller to feature ex-sheriff Brandon Walker and his family (after Hour of the Hunter and Kiss of the Bees) deftly mixes Native American mythology with a harrowing plot. An old Tohono O'odham woman, Emma Orozco, asks Walker for help in solving the brutal murder of her daughter, Roseanne, who was slain in 1970. Walker is able to take on the challenge because of his membership in TLC, The Last Chance, a privately funded agency that looks into old, unsolved crimes. This ingenious arrangement allows for great flexibility in the action of the story. As Walker searches for clues in Roseanne's death, he comes across similar murders—each with no leads, each involving a dismembered body left alongside a road in the Southwest. The reader learns more and more about the killers, the sexually voracious, utterly amoral Gayle Stryker and her husband, Larry, a truly effective pair of monsters. Meanwhile, Walker's dear friend Fat Crack Ortiz, a Tohono O'odham man, is dying of complications from diabetes. Most of Walker's friends, in fact, are Indians, as is his adopted daughter, Lani. He draws not so much knowledge as strength and perspective from them—no mumbo-jumbo here, only believable sensitivity.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Resting both her regular series sleuths, Joanna Brady and J. P. Beaumont, this latest Jance mystery returns to Arizona's Tohono O'Odham reservation, also the setting for two earlier nonseries novels, Hour of the Hunter (1991) and Kiss of the Bees (2000). Retired cop Brandon Walker sets out to investigate a cold case, the mutilation murder of a 15-year-old Tohono O'Odham girl. Suspense builds gradually in the multilayered novel, which is filtered through multiple perspectives, each person adding a piece to a textured puzzle that tracks a pair of serial killers whose crimes extend backward across three decades. As in Jance's two series, the action is intermixed with well-placed social commentary, this time regarding the unconscionable ill use of reservation peoples by vicious mil-ghan (whites), even in the recent past. Although the Indian cultural backdrop is not as integral to the story as it is in Hillerman's novels, this will still appeal to Hillerman devotees as well as to thriller fans accustomed to a sheen of blood spatter and sex with their suspense. Stephanie Zvirin
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: Sound Library (August 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0792732790
• ISBN-13: 978-0792732792
• Shipping Information: View shipping rates and policies
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (35 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,484,520 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

J.A. Jance is the top 10 New York Times bestselling author of the Joanna Brady series; the J. P. Beaumont series; three interrelated thrillers featuring the Walker family; and Edge of Evil, the first in a series featuring Ali Reynolds. Born in South Dakota and brought up in Bisbee, Arizona, Jance lives with her husband in Seattle, Washington, and Tucson, Arizona.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Departure for the Author, August 22, 2004

By 

Dr Cathy Goodwin (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Day of the Dead: A Novel of Suspense (Hardcover)

J A Jance has the gift to write in different voices. There's the Sheriff Brady Series, the JP Beaumont series and now the Brandon Walker series. Readers seem to prefer one or two, and I'm a strongo Joanna Brady fan. Day of the Dead isn't even the same genre, much less style.

The book opens with a young girl's horrific story. Wrenched from a quasi-detention home in Mexico, the young girl thinks she's moving to a new lfie with adopted parents, where she can go to school. She wakes up to find herself imprisoned by people she had every reason to trust, tortured by unwanted sex, with no escape but death.

As other reviewers note, this novel is really suspense rather than mystery. We learn the identity of the evil Stryker couple, and we watch them spreading evil till the very end. The crimes are so ghastly (like some of Lawrence Block's grisly details in the Matt Scudder series), and the innocence such a contrast, that I wonder if Jance was trying to send a strong message.

Perhaps we're supposed to see a vivid example of a wealthy, pillar-of-the-community couple who can literally get away with murder. We can contrast their protected status with the vulnerable orphans they destroy and even the wife's lover, who comes to a tragic end after being framed for a murder.

We get fascinating glimpses into native culture, reminiscent less of Hillerman than of James Doss. Walker's adopted daughter, determined to become a medicine woman, emerges as the most human and likeable character in the book. More distracting were the series of flashbacks that interrupted the forward flow of the suspense. The story of Brenda, a Native American lawyer who gets drawn back to the reservation, seemed especially irrelevant, although the character was likeable.

Jance is too skilled a storyteller to lose the reader and I admire any well-published author who goes out on a limb with a new technique. I can understand why an author might need to diversity her writing. Experienced authors must create new challenges for themselves or risk losing their edge. But as a reader, I can't help wishing she'd opted for another Joanna Brady instead.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Loyal Jance fan but greatly disappointed in this book, August 14, 2004

By 

Jill O. (Wine Country of California, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Day of the Dead: A Novel of Suspense (Hardcover)

I want to start by saying that I am a diehard Jance fan. I love the JP Beaumont and Joanna Brady novels but I found this one so disturbing that I gave it up after 100 pages and just flipped to the end.

Why? It was very gory, graphic and disturbing. I, personally, felt no reason to have included such graphic, detailed child rape and murder scenes. The bottle scene and others were just too much for me.

When I read, I want to be entertained with a good story, perhaps some humor... and I don't want nightmares. This one definitely could give a sensitive soul nightmares for days.

I'm not giving up on Jance but, I disagree with another review, I don't see this character being her most memorable. It's just not a comfortable read.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Western thriller: dark plot but suspenseful conclusion !, August 3, 2004

By 

Gerald M. Bull "Jerry Bull" (Fairview, TN United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Day of the Dead: A Novel of Suspense (Hardcover)

We're fans of Jance, having read her some two dozen mysteries in the JP Beaumont and Sheriff Joanna Brady series. Jance has over time given us three quite different thrillers, which the author defines as stories in which the reader knows the culprits all along, with the suspense coming from the race between the bad guys and the good guys hunting them. These three novels, Hour of the Hunter, Kiss of the Bees, and this new one, Day of the Dead, are actually forming a series themselves, featuring ex-Sheriff Brandon Walker and his family, and the Tohono O'Odham Indian nation. Part of the book is used to expose us to the legends and practices, ala Tony Hillerman, of these native Americans, who in many cases are the victims of nearby evil white men. These sections of the book are interesting, but some will find they slow down the action and detract from the plot. A more balanced view is that they add illumination and evocative background to an otherwise dark storyline about child molestation, sexual deviance, and torture.

Walker gets involved when he's invited to join The Last Chance, a volunteer investigative foundation (managed by our buddy Ralph Ames, JP Beaumont's lawyer friend!); he promptly gets embroiled in a 30-year-old cold case involving a dismembered teenaged young Indian woman. Meanwhile, a new dismembered corpse, a Hispanic teenager, has just been discovered out in the desert; and the authorities who care (as opposed to the ones in charge) begin to suspect a link between the two. Before it's over, many more results of the serial killers efforts will become apparent, and will the rich bad guys escape and fly to Mexico?

Jance warns that the Walker set is "R-rated" compared to her normal fare; the plot is indeed disturbingly evil. Despite the author's fine writing, the first third of the book gets a little slow until Walker starts to zero in on some suspects, and then the action really heats up. Frankly, we prefer Jance's mystery novels, where the violence and inhumanity are less out front. But we have to admit we were turning pages quickly by the end of "Dead"; no doubt so will her legions of fans!