Kai never wanted to know who murdered his mother. However the plans of the dead are different. When they start whispering that he must avenge his mother's death, his only way out is to discover the murderer. Other demands are added to those of the dead: his adoptive father wants him to learn the family business. The problem is that the family business revolves around illegal gambling, with small-time gambling dens, gang fights and thugs in flowered shirts. With no way to escape the dead or his adoptive father, Kai is about to learn that pulling the trigger of a gun is easy and that there are paradises that kill.

Set in Hawaii, Los Muertos Tropicales is peppered with mysterious elements from vernacular mythology and folklore throughout. The author craved a cover that enhanced the noir novel genre while keeping an exotic undertone. In the brief, she mentioned that, at some point, the protagonist says: “If you cut off a gecko's tail, the tail can get inside your ear and leave you deaf.” Geckos are believed to be manifestations of the Mo’o, a shape-shifting lizard deity abound in Polynesian legends, but are also known amongst a wide reader audience in many countries. A gecko's ability to drop its wiggling tail when threatened inspired our cover cooks to illustrate a severed gecko upon which the title is hand-lettered in blood orange gore. The plain green background alludes to the tropical setting while the stark black sets the dark tone.