The literary precedents for Sacred Clowns are American realism, the detective novel, and the American local color tradition. Hillerman continues his realistic portrayal of Chee and Leaphorn as they solve the two murders.

Since the murders take place in different jurisdictions, Hillerman suggests something of the complexity of law enforcement in Indian Country as the two policemen interact with other law enforcement agencies. His tightly-written style owes much to novelists such as Hemingway and the hard-boiled school of mystery writers, including Raymond Chandler. But Hillerman often enhances the detective genre with his emphasis on local color. He attempts to present the native peoples of the region sometimes humorously, always sympathetically, to give his readers a sense of the Native Americans' humanity. His novels render ethnographic detail as accurately as do many scholarly texts.