Dance Hall Of The Dead is a crime novel by American writer Tony Hillerman, the second in the Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee Navajo Tribal Police series, first published in 1973.
He is a challenge for Leaphorn, the most skilled tracker, to find, especially once he realizes who the killer is, and the search moves to a major Zuni ceremony.
Ernesto Cata is in training to play his role as Shulawitsi the Fire God in an upcoming Zuni religious ceremony.
Next, Leaphorn talks with Ted Isaacs, who is about a mile from where the blood was found, at an anthropological dig site under the aegis of Professor Reynolds.
Checking out Jason's Fleece, Leaphorn sees a Zuni kachina, rather unexpected next to the abandoned Navajo death hogan now housing the commune.
After the funeral, Leaphorn visits the hogan of the Bowlegs, where he sees someone slipping away and then discovers the body of George and Cecil's father Shorty.
Speaking again with Susanne, Leaphorn picks up the phrase ‘dance hall’ as where George means to go, which Father Ingles explains in terms of Zuni practices.
Leaphorn meets with two of the six law enforcement agencies now involved in this case, three local and three federal; the FBI has the lead and is certain that the murders are tied to illegal drug movements.
The FBI seeks sellers of illegal drugs and does not care about the dead boys or the old flints; the professor will soon be a missing-persons case, having been dealt his justice by Zuni law.
It is left to Isaacs to decide how important his career is to him now, compared to his girl, last seen at the Zuni police station being questioned by the FBI.
George, a strung out, lonely kid with mystical inclinations, has been most recently attracted to the Zuni kachinas and there are more earthly things to consider -- an archaeological dig and a commune-narcotics drop.
[3]The novel is the subject of an article by Brewster Fitz, where he remarks that Hillerman's "Navajo policemen, Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn, are, however, probably the only non-Anglo or non-European detectives to date whose educations include academic degrees in anthropology.
(3) In other words, in his novels Hillerman seeks to fight the ethnocentrism and ignorance that have dominated in the majority view of Native American cultures.
[5] The author includes a note about how to view what Joe Leaphorn learns about the Zuni religion and Shalako ceremonies, in the course of the novel.
The story reflects the newly emerging drug culture of the US and the phenomenon of hippie communes for younger people wanting to test new ways of living.
In his 2011 book Tony Hillerman's Navajoland: Hideouts, Haunts, and Havens in the Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee Mysteries, author Laurance D. Linford has listed the following 11 geographical locations, real and fictional, mentioned in Dance Hall of the Dead.