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J.A. Jance is primarily known for two series: one involving Seattle homicide detective J.P Beaumont and the other concerning Cochise County, Arizona Sheriff Joanna Brady. DAY OF THE DEAD returns Jance's readers to yet another of her creations --- ex-sheriff Brandon Walker --- in a tale that touches, albeit briefly, on Jance's own past.
Jance and her family were, unknown to them at the time, the intended targets of a serial killer in 1970. DAY OF THE DEAD itself begins with a grisly vignette from 1970, when two Arizona highway workers make a horrible discovery. The victim is a teenaged girl named Roseanne Orozco; her murder goes unsolved for over thirty years, until her mother, Emma, goes to Walker for help. Walker is now part of a private foundation known as The Last Chance (TLC), which investigates cold, unsolved murder cases at the behest of the survivors. Walker's dogged, painstaking investigation unearths a trail of similar murders, all of them sharing an unspeakable methodology and a lack of discernible clues.
DAY OF THE DEAD is not a mystery. The reader learns early on who the murderer is --- actually, it's murderers. Larry and Gayle Stryker are pillars of the community, running a charitable medical foundation that has provided them with a lavish lifestyle and an inexhaustible supply of young victims. Their arrangement --- he tortures the victims, she murders them, he cleans up the scene --- is chilling, all the more so because we only get a hint here and there of how they came to be. The meat of the story is if, and how, Walker will discover who and what the Strykers are. The story is played out against the backdrop of the Arizona desert and the Tohono O'odham reservation, with the occasionally uneasy melding of the Indian and European cultures.
Those who have not read HOUR OF THE HUNTER and KISS OF THE BEES, the first two Brandon Walker novels, may find parts of DAY OF THE DEAD rough sledding. While Jance makes an admirable attempt to fill in parts of the backstory, it occasionally interrupts the flow of the present narrative. Jance's talent is such, however, that one is compelled to keep reading even through the occasional rough spots. There are multiple reasons for this --- the Strykers, TLC, the cultural differences, and Walker's stoic determination to see his investigation through --- so that what results is a novel that is a compelling, if momentarily confusing, read.
Brandon Walker, in the short space of three novels, may well be on his way to becoming Jance's most memorable character. Fans of Jance's two other series who have not availed themselves of the Walker novels should do so, and DAY OF THE DEAD is a major reason why. Recommended.
--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
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