Dance Hall of the Dead

A Navajo police lieutenant and a Zuni officer investigate the disappearance and murder of two boys from a school serving both tribes, and the investigation draws in a Zuni shaman and a Navajo shaman, and a Navajo shaman's shamanic vision of the future. The plot is driven by the investigation of a murder and the search for a missing boy, with a tense standoff at a Zuni ceremony and a drug-trafficking subplot involving a local dealer and a corrupt official, so crime and mystery are the load-bearing genres. The moods are tense and mysterious as the investigation unfolds, with a melancholic undercurrent from the boys' tragic fates and the cultural clash between the two tribes. The coming-of-age trope fits the two boys' loss of innocence and the shaman's role in guiding them; the mentor-figure trope applies to both the shaman and the police officers guiding the investigation; the betrayal trope fits the subplot involving the corrupt official; the multiple-povs trope is present as the story is told through Leaphorn's and Chee's perspectives. The setting is the Navajo and Zuni lands in the American Southwest, a real place with a distinct cultural and historical backdrop.