Day of the Dead CD

Rating:
Summary: crackling suspense based on shocking truth
Review:
It's tempting to praise J. A. Jance's latest, calling it a "Southwestern mystery." It does beautifully evoke the scenes of that region as well as the faces and personalities of the Native Americans who live there. However, one simply cannot fit bestselling mystery writer Jance into a predictable box - she's far too original for that. So, let's simply say that the setting for this is the Southwest, by turns barren and beautiful. The villain is as merciless as the scorching sun over that area's desert.

Day of the Dead returns to the story of former sheriff Brandon Walker, first introduced in Hour of the Hunter and Kiss of the Bees. Walker's now a retiree - a none too happy one at that. Golf isn't his game, solving crimes is; he's bored. Wife, Diana Ladd, is still typing away on Pulitzer Prize winning books, but Walker is in a funk, missing the action and challenge of former days.

He's asked to join an organization, TLC, or The Last Chance. Purpose of this group is to solve old crimes, cold cases; this is right down his alley. Little does he know that the first case is one that his department messed up some years back. A fifteen-year-old Tohono O'odham girl was murdered, not only murdered but mutilated. What was a cold case becomes a hot case when it becomes evident that there is a serial killer on the loose with a decades old crime record.

Jance, a New York Times bestselling author, has penned 29 novels, some 10 million of which are in print. She spent several years living on the Tohono O'odham reservation west of Tucson, Arizona, thus her memories of the scene and the people are vivid, all of which enriches her story. In addition, while she and her husband were on the reservation they became the targets of a serial killer. Recognized by the press as "among the best - if not the best mystery novelist writing today, " she writes from the heart and from experience. Don't miss "Day of the Dead" for crackling suspense derived from shocking truth.

- Gail Cooke

Rating:
Summary: a dead day of the dead
Review: I have read all of her books and have loved each one. This one I read the first 75 pages and threw it out. Trash. I don't know what happened but I thought it was just terrible!

Rating:
Summary: Bad, Bad, Bad
Review: I have read every book written by Ms Jance and have enjoyed each one. Not this one. I read for intertainment before bed and this book is truly not what you are use to with Sheriff Brady or Detective Beaumont. Don't waste your money on this bad bad book. Save it and maybe Sheriff Brady will again appear.

Rating:
Summary: day of the dead
Review: I love mysteries and read an excerpt from one of J. A. Jance's books 'Death of a Snowbird' in book that I had purchased. It sounded good and I couldn't find it so I purchased this one. I'm very disappointed in this book. Way too graphic...I felt like I was reading a nasty porno murder. I don't know what other's expected but I expected a really good mystery. This isn't what I experienced. A good mystery doesn't need to be this graphic. I stopped reading it at 117 pages and at this time realized that I could never recommend it to anyone I know. Sorry, but it doesn't live up to the truly great authors like Ellis Peters and Tonly Hillerman.

Rating:
Summary: A WELL TOLD STORY - SKILLFULLY DONE
Review: I must admit that I started to give this one three stars simply because it almost made me physically ill as I read it. The subject matter simply is not my cup of tea. But then I started thinking about it. If the author was able to tell a story that brought up that strong of an emotion in me, then she must be doing her job as a story teller. Being a father and grandfather, I suppose I fret about such things anyway. As distastful as the subject was, i.e. kidnapping, rape, torture and the murder of very young girls, it was nevertheless well done and like it or not, I suppose horrible things such as this do happen. This was a difficult novel to put down. The author certainly has a good command of the language and is certainly a master story teller. I suspect she, the author put herself out on a limb with this one, as I note it is a departure from her usual work. This is good. I wish more front line authors did as such. Besides that, I am also impressed by anyone who still reads Harold Bell Wright. Anyway, I highly recommend this one.

Rating:
Summary: Loyal Jance fan but greatly disappointed in this book
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Definitely worth reading
Review: I've read every J.A. Jance book and found this one to be a very good read. Since I'm familiar with her other books, some of the characters were familiar to me, Diana, Ralph Ames etc., but even if I wasn't, this was a compelling read. I'm looking forward to more Brandon Walker. Maybe Sheriff Brady and Beaumont will turn up in a future book. I never miss a Jance book, and this one was no disappointment.

Rating:
Summary: A Departure for the Author
Review: 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.




Rating:
Summary: A tough, but ultimately compelling and worthwhile read
Review: 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

Rating:
Summary: Strong finish after slow start
Review: Retired Sheriff Brandon Walker gets a new lease on life when he's chosen to join an elite group of retired law enforcement personnel who investigate cold cases--and his current case is not only stone cold, but inconceivably brutal. More than thirty years ago, a local Indian teenager was found hacked to death, stuffed into a cooler and left on the side of the road. But there are plenty of leads, ignored by his own indifferent department.

Soon Brandon and a young homicide detective discover alarming similarities between this ancient case and a more recent one. They soon come to realize a brutal serial killer has been in their midst for decades and the wrong man arrested for the new case. Their separate investigations lead them through a world of secretive and sometimes bewildering Native American customs and across the Mexican border, involving a respected charity, pillars of society, and even Brandon's own daughter.

You aren't likely to meet a more chilling pair of psychopaths than the villains in DAY OF THE DEAD. The story coalesces in a tense and lethal chase scene that rivals any I've read.

During the first half, the author makes so many side trips into various points of view and into the past that the story drags and is confusing at times. But pacing in the second half is much faster, rewarding the reader for being patient, and all of the plot strings pull together in a neat, if chilling, bow.