Day of the Dead

Brandon Walker, once the sheriff of Pima County, Arizona, no longer feels he has purpose. A reluctant retiree living in the long shadow of his wife, Diana Ladd, a successful author of true-crime books, he is bored with life. Salvation comes with an invitation to join The Last Chance, an exclusive fraternity of former cops and forensic experts who look into unsolved murders. One case is staring Brandon in the face with cold, dead, entreating eyes, an investigation that may have been mishandled by his department when he was a young lawman. For more than 30 years, the brutal murder of a local Papago girl has remained a mystery.
The trail of the killer soon leads Brandon into a strange world at the unlikely border between forensic science and tribal mysticism: a place where evil hides behind a perfect facade. Now the seeds of terror sown three decades earlier are bearing awful fruit. A forgotten homicide in the Arizona desert is the beginning of a nightmare that is about to ensnare Brandon, the only person still alive who can unravel a truth more frightening than he ever imagined.

A novel that bristles with electrifying intensity and is alive with the breathtaking atmosphere and rich characterizations that have become J. A. Jance trademarks, Day of the Dead is a gripping and extraordinary journey into the darkness and the author's most spellbinding thriller to date.