Day of the Dead Crime Fiction

What holiday could be more fitting to Crime Fiction than El Dia de los Muertos: Day of the Dead? 

Día de los Muertos is celebrated every year on November 1st and 2nd. On these days, it is believed that the souls of the dead return to visit their living family members. Many people celebrate the holiday by visiting the graves of deceased loved ones and setting up altars with their favorite foods, drink, and photos.

Here's my updated list of Day of the Dead Crime Fiction. Be sure and check my Halloween Crime Fiction list for other mysteries that start on Halloween and include Day of the Dead. I've also added a short list of Day of the Dead episodes on some popular TV series, as well as some of my favorite Day of the Dead movies!

Let me know if I'm missing any titles/authors.

Day of the Dead Crime Fiction

Day of the Day by Victoria A. Brownworth

Day of the Dead by R. Allen Chappell

The Day of the Dead by John Creed
The Day of the Dead: The Autumn of Commissioner Ricciardi by Maurizio de Giovanni

Trick or Treason by Kathi Daley
Catering to the Dead by Kim Davis

A Cemetery, a Cannibal, and the Day of the Dead by CC Dragon 

Day of the Dead by Drew Golden

Days of the Dead by Barbara Hambly
Sugar Skull by Denise Hamilton
Dios De Los Muertos by Kent Harrington
The Wrong Goodbye by Chris Holm
Death Arts by Melanie Jackson
Day of the Dead by J.A. Jance
Depth of Winter by Craig Johnson
In Big Trouble by Laura Lippman

Devil's Kitchen by Clark Lohr
Weave Her Thread with Bones by Claudia Long
Day of the Dead by Manuel Luis Martinez
Secondhand Souls by Christopher Moore

Bread of the Dead by Ann Myers

Day of the Dead by Mark Roberts
The Day of the Dead by Bart Spicer

Children and YA:

Loulou and Pea and the Mural Mystery by Jill Diamond; Illustrations by Lesley Ramos

Ghosts by Raina Telgemeier  (Graphic Novel)

Cemetery Boys by Aidan Thomas

The Day of the Dead Mystery (The Boxcar Children Mysteries) by Gertrude Chandler Warner

Any titles missing?

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Some Day of the Dead episodes on your favorite mystery TV series:

The Brokenwood Mysteries: Day of the Dead, Season 10, Episode 2.

Murder She Wrote: Day of the Dead, Season 8, Episode 19

Penny Dreadful: City of Angels, Day of the Dead, Episode 10

Death in Paradise: Murder on the Day of the Dead, Series 7, Episode 5

Movies:

I love to watch Coco on The Day of the Dead. It's not a mystery, but it's a fantastic animated film featuring the holiday!!

The James Bond movie Spectre opens with a great take on Mexico's Day of the Dead! 

The Book of Life, another great animated film, that takes place on the Day of the Dead.

What are your favorites?

 
 

Carolyn Hart: Dead, White, and Blue

I'll be posting my Fourth of July Crime Fiction List later today or tomorrow, but in the meantime, I asked award winning mystery author Carolyn Hart to tell us about her new mystery Dead, White, and Blue. It's the perfect read for the holiday!

Hart writes the Death on Demand series set in a mystery bookstore on a South Carolina sea island and the Bailey Ruth Raeburn series featuring a lively redheaded ghost. She is also the author of several WWII novels, including ESCAPE FROM PARIS which is now available from Seventh Street Books. Letter from Home, a WWII novel set on the home front, received the Agatha Award for Best Mystery of 2003. It was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize by the Oklahoma Center for Poets and Writers. Hart has been nominated 9 times for the Agatha Award for Best Novel and has won 3 times. In 2007 she received the Lifetime Achievement Award at Malice Domestic.

CAROLYN HART:
DEAD, WHITE, AND BLUE

I loved writing Dead, White, and Blue because I tried something different. This is the 23rd book in the Death on Demand series, and I wanted to offer readers a different kind of puzzle. Instead of beginning with murder, we have a disappearance. The brash, sexy second wife of a very rich man walks into the pines as fireworks explode above the country club on the Fourth of July. She doesn’t go home. No one knows where she is or whether she is living or dead.

The husband doesn’t look for her. The only person who cares is a troubled teenage step-daughter who comes to Max Darling and asks him to find Shell Hurst the week after the Fourth.

Max, of course, can’t take a young girl’s money and this is obviously a family affair. He declines to get involved though he is upset when she runs from his office in tears.

Annie Darling insists no one can simply disappear into thin air and not be seen again. .

Max reminds her of Judge Crater and Jimmy Hoffa.

Annie decides to find out more about what happened the night of the Fourth. Who was Shell Hurst? Who loved her or hated her? Would she leave the island with a word to anyone? Was she the kind of woman to sail away on a rich man’s yacht?

Annie and Max were at the 4th of July country dance where Shell Hurst made a dramatic entrance - and exit. She taunted her husband, blew off a man who was infatuated with her, insisted on dancing with another woman’s husband who obviously wanted to disappear from view.

A waiter from the country club disappears.

Annie and Max follow a twisting tale of deceit, adultery, panic, and despair and ultimately only they can save an appealing teenage golf whiz from a murder charge.

Max’s mother, mystery expert Henny Brawley, and crusty mystery author Emma Clyde aren’t on the island but they follow Annie and Max’s progress and send challenging texts: WTB? (Where’s the body?)

My favorite part of the book was the deception involved in the trenching of two golf course holes by a stolen classic MG found wrecked on a bridge across a lagoon.

I hope readers are intrigued by DEAD, WHITE, AND BLUE and find it a twisty, unusual story as they celebrate the Fourth, picturing Shell Hurst striding triumphantly toward the pines as fireworks explode in the sky.

Read Carolyn Hart's guest post on Escape from Paris HERE.