Dia de los Muertos Books

This is one of the best books on Day of the Dead that I have bought, it is well written and the photo's are excellent. I have many books on this subject but this is one of my favorites.

Excellent Documentary insight into the Mexican celebration of the dead. Very well done photojournalism and fine printing.

The Day of the DeadThe Day of the Dead / Dia De Los Muertos

This is a beautiful and interesting coffee table book. The celebration is happy, colorful and unusual. The text explains it in a well written, knowledgable manner. The pictures are expressive, telling a story of their own.

Dia De Los Muertos has all the ingredients for a truly excellent noir thriller--a seedy locale, amoral characters, femmes fatales, suspenseful plot turns--but unfortunately Harrington isn't quite writer enough to put it all together with the necessary skill and effectiveness. While Harrington does score points for creating a sordid, menacing atmosphere for his story, the writing is never better than serviceable; at times it is bad, and at times it is straight-up awful. The dialogue amounts to little more than cheap film-noir cliches and offers almost no insight into the characters. I didn't make it through the entire book--near the end I came to a ludicrous sequence involving two women and their, um, plaything that made me fling the book across the room in contempt--but for as far as I'd made it I was still left with no sense of who the people were who populated this story. It's a shame that all of these great story elements couldn't have been picked up by more capable hands.

Kent Harrington tells the story of Calhoun, a corrupt, renegade DEA agent who supplements his income by bringing illegals into the United States for a fee. Harrington deftly moves through Tiajuana's grimmest neighborhoods and paints a picture of a man -- deeply in debt to loan sharks and knee breakers -- whose badge offers no protection.

The book is filled with violence, dished out as well as received, by Calhoun. In addition to his psychic problems, Calhoun is also plagued with a fever and there are several surrealistic sequences when the reader is confronted with scenes that leave one wondering if it's real, or part of Calhoun's physical illness.

Despite his corruption, Calhoun is likable, sympathetic and has his own code -- albeit twisted backwards by life.

While I enjoy Harrington's writing -- and especially the gripping DARK RIDE -- I found this novel a bit to familliar. This ground, an American in Mexico on the wrong side of the law, has been done often and done well, and I didn't feel like Day of the Dead was covering any new ground. It reminded me of THE ULTIMATE GOOD LUCK by Richard Ford,b ut without the heart that Ford gave the subject. A worthy read for sure, but not his best.

This is the best noir novel I have ever read, bar none, and that includes Cain and Goodis. It has been said that noir is "people you don't like doing things you don't care about," but not this one. You come to care intensely about Calhoun and his doomed one-day run against Bordertown Fate. But mainly, you find yourself very quickly in the hands of someone who can write, and nothing else really matters in the end. Cheers to Kent for writing it and Dennis McMillan for publishing it and shame on St. Martins for giving it a pass.

The sin, corruption, evil, and dissipation of the seamy underbelly of a border town permeate the pages of Kent Harrington's latest novel. The taste, smell, and feel of humanity living on the edge of poverty, sexual frenzy, and perversion suck you into a world of noir so compelling it draws all light from a room. A case of hypnotic revolution for an existence foreign to most mesmerizes and intrigues, making it impossible to quit reading. Faster and faster we turn the pages, compelled by the need-to-know, but shocked by what we find. Soon to be a major motion picture and if Kent Harrington's suerte holds, DÍA de los MUERTOS will take its place among legendary film noir classics.

Kathee S. Card

I've been looking for descriptions of festivities from the Latin American world for a long time. And it's not easy ! Too often it's assumed that everyone knows whar Cinco de Mayo is all abour, but it's all mysterious and novel in my part of the world.

Thank you very much Valerie Menard for your excellent resource

Its really great you can learn about the different celebrations of the Latino culture. You'll also find some traditional recipes, and other little fact we might have never bothered to learn from our parents. Its a nice and easy read. Its a great book for us latinos who want to know more about our traditions and or those who are interested in our culture. Everyone Latino and NON alike should go out and get this book its a great reference guide into the Latino culture, celebrations, and traditions.

When my sister-in-law was planning to get married, I wanted to get her a gift that she could keep and refer to throughout her future. We come from a large Hispanic family, so when I saw this book I was impressed. It made a cute gift and she was really excited to have gotten it. It goes thru all the different Mexican-themed holidays, offering history and ways to celebrate. Once she has kids, I know they will like it too!

There are not a lot of comprehensive books on Latin American Holidays (many on individual holidays, but few books that offer a solid description of multiple holidays). This book, though it focuses exclusively on the holidays and how they are celebrated in the United States, does manage to describe a number of holidays, and best of all, gives lots of ideas for activities (whether its recipes, or children's activity, or websites to visit for more information) that would work just as well in a classroom or in your own home, whether you hope to resurrect your own families' traditions, or create new traditions of your own. The layout is lovely, and the information is fairly complete, giving historical descriptions as well as descriptions of the traditions associated with the holiday. I highly recommend this book. Also note that the book is available in Spanish, under the title (I believe) _Tradiciones_.

There is a necessity for a book like this, although this book could have done a more even job of filling the need. A resource on some of the latino holiday/celebrations, slanted towards how they are celebrated in the U.S., this is can be a helpful resource.
The down side is not all the celbrations are covered that you would expect; practically nothing about how Carneval (Mardi Gras) is celebrated in Latin America itself, only a mention of the Miami, Florida festivity. And there is absolutely no mention of Semana Santa, the week before Easter. On the other hand, a good job of describing the difference between Cinco de Mayo and the real Mexican Independence day in September; as well as receipes and insights that give the book a light-hearted feel. If you are looking for information on a specific holiday, this good be a good resource or a complete blank: If you are looking to find out more about Lation culture, this will be helpful. This is not a travel resource to prepare so much for visiting Latin America during festivals, meant more for understanding the celebrations here in the States, how they are celebrated, why, and their origins.

Set in Tijuana, Dia de los Muertos is all about borders, between life and death, love and hate, doom and redemption, joy and despair. It's one day in the life of Vincent Calhoun, a rogue DEA agent who's run out of last chances. His colleagues are onto him, he owes more money than he could possibly repay, and he's dying of dengue fever -- but it seems to him that he might just be able to pull things out, especially when the love of his life gets off a prison bus in the town square. Dia de los Muertos combines nerve-wracking suspense with bizarre humor (a 400-pound mobster who needs to be smuggled across the border) and, above all, a wild and unexpected sense of romance. The new introduction by James Crumley places DIA squarely in the classic noir tradition.

If you are a fan of Hard Boiled at its truely best. Order this book, order this book, order this book.

The 36 hours chronicled in this hard-boiled crime novel are among the pulpiest one is likely to find. Set in Tijuana during the Day of the Dead festival on November 2, the story follows Vince Calhoun, a DEA agent gone totally off the rails. As a young man he was a teacher in Southern California -- that is, until he couldn't keep his hands off a sexy student and was brought up on statutory rape charges. He chose Marines over jail, and it's implied, spent some dirty years in Central America at the behest of Uncle Sam. Now, he's a man with nothing to lose, smuggling people across the border for a hefty fee and losing all of this back at the greyhound tracks. Although he's scum, he's not the lowest scum in Tijuana -- that would be an Englishman named Slaughter, the one Vince owes a lot of money to.

The book all takes place in one crazy day and night, as Vince scrambles to cross four Chinese woman on one run, some wealthy Central Americans in another, borrow a boatload of money from a deadly loan shark for four hours, place it on a "can't miss" tip from a friend, all while trying to stave off dengue fever that has him bleeding from the eyes and ears. Oh yeah, there's also the small matter of the love of his life (the former student) getting released from jail today. Plus, the final job of the day, to cross Mexico's Most Wanted, an immobile 500 pound tub of lard drug dealer that everyone is gunning for. Get the picture?

Basically, the book consists of Vince's non-stop running around trying desperately to hold things together amidst the chaos of Tijuana. There's plenty of violence, drugs, and of course sex -- notably involving a sexy statuesque Latina carrying a gun in one hand and a strap-on "marital aid" in the other. The book oozes local color, from the boy who parades the donkey to drum up business for the legendary show, to the "rat patrols" of off-duty judiciales who cruise the desert looking to rob and murder border-crossers, armband-wearing fascist party members rioting against foreigners, Indian girl fortune tellers, dead-eyed bartenders, crooked cops, and on and on and on. Not for the faint of heart, the book is one long binge of sleaze and grotesquery, every development crazier and more absurd than the next. The story of a doomed loser has been told many times, but other than an extra dollop of kaleidoscopic vividness, this version doesn't have a lot to offer.

When I ordered this book, I was excited to see a book about Guatemala's Day of the Dead celebrations, since I am from Guatemala and have attended the barrilete festivals. However, the storyline of this book is uninspiring and could barely hold an adult's attention, much less a child's (the book is intended for children). The photos are equally uninspiring and many are black and white. Both the black and white photos as well as the overly dark color photos (did the photographer lack a flash?)fail to capture the colorful brilliance of this wonderful ritual.

Worst of all, the book doesn't explain the history or meaning of the Guatemalan tradition. The story consists simply in the protagonist asking his grandfather's spirit to help him fly the kite, but never explains that the purpose of flying kites on Day of the Dead is to send messages to the dead and help family spirits find their loved ones. The book only shows photos of boys making and flying kites, and has statements such as "the boys of Santiago test the wind" and "the boys have time to go to market" (to buy kite materials) - suggesting that girls do not make and fly kites in Santiago Sacatepequez. This is not true.

In short, I wouldn't recommend this book, although it is better than nothing, since it is the only book I have seen written in English about this celebration in Guatemala.

The day of the dead is celebrated in Santiago, Sacatepequez, Guatemala with the flying of giant colorful kites. This book provides great photos and documentation of this traditional festival. However, the story is not written in a style accessible to children from four to eight years old. The vocabulary is advanced (e.g. resplandecer) and the sentence construction is awkward. (This may be the result of an inept translation, as I read only the Spanish version). But the story lacks the warmth and vitality of other children's books from Guatemala.