Tropic of Night

Jimmy Paz #1

by Michael Gruber

"Just when it looks as if detective fiction has plowed every gory, suspenseful possibility, along comes a novel that raises the stakes on the genre. Tropic of Night introduces the killer as enchanter, a conjurer schooled in African sorcery. This witch floats through the story literally unseen by his victims, whom he forces to see and hear only what he wants them to. It's a frightening concept executed with poetic vision and authority.

Genres: Mystery, Thriller, Fiction, Horror, Crime, Suspense, Mystery Thriller

563 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Michael Gruber is an author living in Seattle, Washington. He attended Columbia University and received his Ph.D. in biology from the University of Miami. He worked as a cook, a marine biologist, a speech writer, a policy advisor for the Jimmy Carter White House, and a bureaucrat for the EPA before becoming a novelist.

He is generally acknowledged to be the ghostwriter of the popular Robert K. Tanenbaum series of Butch Karp novels starting with No Lesser Plea and ending with Resolved. After the partnership with Tanenbaum ended, Gruber began publishing his own novels under William Morrow and HarperCollins.

Gruber's "Jimmy Paz" trilogy, while critically acclaimed, did not sell at the same levels as the Butch Karp series in the United States. The Book of Air and Shadows became a national bestseller shortly after its release in March of 2007, however.

Series:
* Jimmy Paz

Reviews

[Will Byrnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Michael Gruber - image from GR

This is first-rate, a gripping detective read from start to finish, replete with tons of payload about the world of “magic.” There is particular emphasis on cultic practices in Africa and the Caribbean with notice of remote Siberian beliefs as well.

Gruber's site

Others in the Jimmy Paz series I have read
-----2005 - Valley of Bones - #2
-----2007 - Night of the Jaguar - #3

[Panagiotis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Το πρώτο βιβλίο της χρονιάς αποτέλεσε μια αρκετά αμφιλεγόμενη αναγνωστική εμπειρία. Ο Γκρούμπερ πιάστηκε από τις κεραίες μου από ιαχές και ενθουσιώδεις συχνότητες: ένας συγγραφέας αστυνομικού δίχως προηγούμενο, με μια μυστήρια υπόθεση που μπλέξει δοξασίες, τελετές και μαύρες μαγείες, και γράφει όπως κανείς άλλος. Και ήταν τρομαχτικός, όσο τίποτα.

Τελικά;

Τελικά, εν μέρει κάποιες προσδοκίες καλύφθηκαν και με το παραπάνω: το βιβλίο δεν χρησιμοποιεί την μαύρη μαγεία ως ένα αφηγηματικό ανδρείκελο -δεν είναι λίγες οι περιπτώσεις όπου τέτοια πράματα καταλήγουν ως κλούβιο υπόβαθρο-, αλλά καταδύεται σ' έναν κόσμο όπου η μαγεία είναι η τεχνολογία αλλοτινών καιρών. Ο όγκος πληροφοριών, οι λεπτομέρειες με τις οποίες το σπονδυλώτό μυθιστόρημα ταξιδεύει τον αναγνώστη μέσα από τα μάτια της ανθρωπολόγου (ο ένας εκ των δύο ηρώων) στις στέπες της Ρωσίας και μετά στις αβάνες τις Αφρικής είναι πραγματικά κάτι ξεχωριστό. Πολλές φορές σταμάτησα την ανάγνωση για αναζητήσω πληροφορίες. Δεν είναι, όμως, μόνο ο ερευνητικός άθλος του συγγραφέα που εδραίωσε μια αληθοφανή ιστορία, αλλά και η οικονομία με την οποία διαχειρίζεται το υλικό του. Το υλικό του διαχέεται στην ιστορία, δίχως ποτέ να παίρνει την σκυτάλη από την μυθοπλασία.

Το βιβλίο, όμως, έπρεπε κάποια στιγμή να γίνει αστυνομικό. Και εγώ, τελικά, δεν τα πάω καλά με την σύγχρονη, Αμερικάνικη αστυνομική λογοτεχνία: ο αστυνομικός/ντετέκτιβ είναι άλλος ένας μπάτσος. Ο συγγραφέας συγκρατήθηκε (μ' αρέσει ο Γκρούπερ, γιατί είναι εγκρατής σε πολυφορεμένα τεχνάσματα) και δεν τον έκανε σούπερ γοητευτικό ή τσαλαπατημένο. Είναι, όμως, άχρωμος, όπως όλοι οι αμερικάνοι σε τέτοιες ιστορίες. Και, όπως συμβαίνει ακόμα και με τα καλύτερα βιβλία του είδους, όλα μπαίνουν στην θέση τους στο τέλος, μετά από μια τετριμμένη κλιμάκωση.

Αυτή η λογοτεχνία δεν γνωρίζει χιούμορ και καυστικότητα, παίρνει πολύ στα σοβαρά τον εαυτό της. Ίσως εγώ πάλι είμαι ανάποδος. Μ΄ αρέσει, όμως, η αναποδιά μου. Είμαι αυτός που είμαι, και τοιουτοτρόπως καθορίζονται οι λαχτάρες και τα γούστα μου. Το συστήνω, όμως, στους φίλους του αστυνομικού μυθιστορήματος. Του δίνω τρία αστέρια - για την συγγραφική του συνέπεια, τον άθλο τον ερευνητικό του ικανότατου Γκρούμπερ και της αναγνωστικής τέρψης που μου έδωσε.

[Harry · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you're reading this review of the Jimmy Paz series than you've read them all. In my opinion this series is remarkable for its intelligence, its strong plot and, it's philosphical world view and psychological depth of characters. Mixing murder with ethnography and sorcery, Gruber brings us a fascinating tale of Jimmy Paz, a cuban-american detective who is about to have his world and beliefs shaken to the core.

We all have brains, we all possess varying degrees of intelligence, and we all are physical beings with fears and desires on a basic level. Genre fiction: such as Noir detective series appeal largely to the latter. Literary genres appeal to the former. Gruber fuses the two and captivates our entire being as a whole within his diabolical novels.

Though I've left paranormal and fantasy tastes in the books I read behind (I've read tons of them in my earlier years) I, for my part, am glad to have Gruber on my list as he rekindles what I loved about those books and fuses them with my current day preferances.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a new addition to my shelf. I've read it once before, and on this second read I realized it was one I would want to read again and that I would want to read it again whenever I wanted (meaning I don't want to wait till its available at the library) so I bought it.

On one level it is a supernatural type thriller. The story is good, and I enjoy his characters. On another level, it is an exploration of ideas outside the realm of Western thought and belief, a look at race and privilege, parenthood and love. Gruber is, I'm convinced, a lapsed Catholic - they have a certain tone and attitude, I've discovered.

I'm not much into the idea of saints - I've never needed someone to talk to God for me. But I like the Santeria perspective (as presented in the book so recognize that it may not be completely accurate, although he is very convincing...that can be dangerous) where "saints" are spirits of physical forces, of states of being (the sea, motherhood) and they participate in the human realm through humans, not as humans. They are magical, but by Gruber's description, a very real magic. Not smoke and mirrors, but energy and power that exists and that we (Westerners) don't readily acknowledge.


1/30/2012
This has become required reading for winter. For all sorts of reasons - beyond that the sun is up less - winter tends to be darker, and this book seems to both plunge into darkness and erupt into light at the same time. It confirms my faith that there are an infinite number of paths to God.

For this reading, I think, it was the nature of love. How do we know we love someone? Why do we, for that matter? I love this description: "You know what real love is, Detective? It's not what you think. It's not loving the virtues of the beloved. Anyone can love you for your virtues, that's no trick. I mean, that's what virtues are - loveable qualities. It's the unlovely stuff that makes love. We all have a nasty little wounded place in us, and if you can get someone to find that and love it, then you really have something."

2/13/2013
February is the crossroads of my year, and this is a story of crossroads. This year it was the idea of memory, betrayal and forgiveness. When Jane remembers her husband she still thinks of the way they were at the beginning, but how much of that was real? Are those happy memories false because of everything she knows? And if she was wrong about those happy times, what else is she wrong about? "What above all blasts your confidence, makes you weak and small, poisons the past, erases the memory of joy, cripples even the possibilities of joy to come? The betrayal of the deepest heart, that's what. No one can do you like you do yourself."

You have to forgive to keep from crippling joy in your life.

I also liked: "It's frightening to be in the hands of the santos, isn't it? We love to think we are in control. But we do it because we know they love us and they know we love them...they are of God in the end, a path to God." Forgiving is a lot of letting go of control. Far easier and possibly more comfortable to punish ourselves for loving and being hurt in the past.

2/2014
I don't think I've outgrown the need for this book, but it was not nearly as therapeutic as past readings. The story is still fantastic, but my reaction was more 'hmmm'. Recently, I read the Hornby column (Ten Years in the Tub) where he comments that one is rarely the same reader twice. There are books I loved so much on the first read that I am afraid to read them again, aware that its possible they will fail me - or rather, that I've changed and they will be the same. Perhaps that is the case here. Certainly, the book does not change over time. And February wasn't so dark this year - just cold.

[Bibliophile · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think I was misled by the blurbs on Tropic of Night and I was expecting a mystery to be solved by the Cuban-American detective Jimmy Paz, who features heavily on the back cover, and not nearly as much in the book! Instead, I got a heavily supernatural horror story that presupposes that magic and things like zombies are real and features a mad sorcerer trying to gain absolute power by murdering pregnant women.

The story was interesting in parts (though far too drawn-out and filled with anthropology 101 filler and pseudo-spiritual anti-rational musings), which is why I gave it two stars instead of just one, but the ending, after the ridiculous amount of buildup, was a letdown. Moreover, the idea that the world could only be saved by a white woman who was so awesome that an ancient tribe of African sorcerers chose her to be their savior and that she was fighting an evil black man, is so over-the-top racist that I can't believe it was intentional. Jane Doe (yes, that’s really her name! And it's fitting because she's such a blank) was definitely a woman written by a man and I just didn’t buy her character at all (not to mention her amazing lack of remorse at killing another woman and stealing her child, despite her rationalization that the child's mother was total unfit to be her mother. It's also another instance where the wise white lady - Jane - swoops in to save the black child from its savage and evil black mother - and again, hello racism!) I don’t think I’m going to read anything else by Michael Gruber – at least I bought this book used, so I don’t feel like I spent full price on it!

[Mark Stevens · Rating 4 out of 5]

First, you need to know there is a glossary in the back. Wish I had known that when I started. Alujonnu is an evil spirit; ama is head; dulfna is aura of witchcraft, ilegbo is to enter trance and a zandoul is a container for magical objects...you get the idea. There are few dozen terms. Doesn't hurt to bone up.

Once you're into this thick, rich story...you will be moving. There's energy on every page. Put a toe in the water of this book and suddenly you are water-skiing (barefoot, of course) at 100 m.p.h. Michael Gruber's style is engaging and sucks you in. I waded through all the lessons in Santeria and voodoo and magic potions. I enjoyed the trip on this big, pumping happy-with-itself storyline. I'm sure you could have cut 60 or 100 pages but that wouldn't have given "Tropic of Night" its larger-than-life feel. It's sprawling and ambitious. You have to admire the sheer reach, if nothing else. Because I like cop stories and mysteries, I easily latched onto Jimmy Paz. He gave me an anchor through the book; I looked forward to seeing him return and enjoyed the banter with his fellow cop, Cletis Barlow, who is prone to cite Bible verse to make his points. Gimmicky? Not in Gruber's hands.

Paz is a recognizable character but like all of Gruber's characters are big, live large and have pushed the boundaries of normal. For instance, in the case of Paz, his string of lady friends and the intricate schedule he maintains keeping their needs met--or not.
But most of the book is devoted to Jane Doe. Yes, that's the real name of the character. Jane soaks up two-thirds of the book, first through a first person narrative and also through her diaries about various anthropology expeditions to Siberia and Africa and her exposure to, basically, black magic. She's increasingly a black magic woman and we are along as she (and Gruber) explains it all.
I feel as if Gruber must have sprayed something in my eyes to make me view the world differently--because there is far more back story here than I would normally tolerate, let alone enjoy.

Gruber doesn't treat the back story as anything less than integral to the main plot. He pumps up the story of Jane Doe and her journeys--primarily through edgy anthropology (yes, there is such a thing) and African witchcraft--with ample detail. I don't know if Gruber is capable of giving anything short shrift. Be prepared to learn something, unless you are already familiar with this whole realm.
Caution: the ending borders on horror. I don't know where the line is, exactly, but it gets pretty grisly. The ending gave me pause. It got more than a bit dark. I covered my eyes and kept on reading. Even though some of the tough images are embedded in visions and dreams, that doesn't make them any less challenging to digest, does it?

Put your conventions aside and be prepared. This is a genre-bender, that's for sure.

[Claudia Putnam · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an astonishing read. Slow start, but to me it felt consistent with the simmering, humid heat in Florida. The narrator's voice captured me, and I had no doubt that she was going to take me somewhere interesting. And it certainly was interesting, including a real-world, anthropologically based theory of sorcery. As in, how, if it existed, it might actually work, without any hocus-pocus.

I was disappointed that Jimmy Paz turned out to be the focus of the three-book series. He was okay as a character, but in this book, it's the first character, the female PhD candidate who has returned from African having worked among what was probably the ur-Vodun tribe and learned maybe more than she ever wanted to know. SHE is the one I would have been willing to follow anywhere and didn't want to leave. Paz is a bit of a spaz.

The stories in the follow-up books are also extremely interesting--examining possession and shape changing with a realistic but not reductive eye. I'd just rather have had the first narrator as my guide, personal preference.

Though then I guess you couldn't have all those guy's-eye views of sexual encounters. Which always felt a little intrusive given the more literary level of the writing/thinking in these books. It was as if Gruber suddenly recalled--Oh, shit, I'm writing a thriller! Better have a sex scene on the kitchen counter! And then this scene would be awkwardly inserted with nothing else to do with the story. Don't get me wrong. Nothing against kitchen counter sex. Just didn't seem contextualized.

All three Paz books are interesting all the same. I don't often find books anymore that I want to reread just so I can return to those worlds, those thoughts. I've already reread Tropic of Night, and I expect to read the other three again, as well as The Good Son, dark as that one is.

[Robyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

So, this book makes me wonder why some books are the ones everyone is talking about and on the bestseller list, and why some aren't. How did this fall through the cracks? Maybe because it's a mystery? I don't know, but this book was interesting on a whole lot of levels. You've got your weird anthropology, santeria and sorcery, things going on with race and gender, and it's a mystery. The core idea is that sorcery and magic among hunter/gatherer societies is just a different kind of technology which we "civilized" peoples don't quite understand. What a cool idea! Definitely worth a read.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Murder, love, family dynamics, shamanism, anthropology, and mystery are all in this great book. Gruber has become one of my favorite authors and I plan on reading all of his books, and waiting for his next. His story has depth in many different areas. He makes one think about how we perceive reality and the Western bias to dismiss things we cannot explain from a scientific standpoint. You will think you know who is responsible for the killings as you read, but you just can't be sure. His setting includes a number of different cultures, and countries over the course of the book.

[Christan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the most interesting books that I have read in the past five years. Blending elements of voodoo and hard boiled crime fiction, this book has an incredible ending that will stay with you. Highly recommended.

[DROPPING OUT · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gruber is amazing at being able to set a scene and draw the reader into it. As with his later book, The Book of Air and Shadows, he has several pots boiling on the stove at once, yet one does not get the feeling that he is writing formulaic "pot-boilers." What is real and what is illusion? These are questions Gruber visits over and over, and just when one thinks one has a handle on things, he can pull the rug from beneath one's feet. Stephen King may be the Maestro of "Creep Fiction," but I think Gruber is a more skilled writer.

*****************************************************

Brrrr! What a skilfull writer Gruber is, being able to build the suspense up and then sustain it. It is so easy to become caught up in the text that one can forget to try to "stand outside" and appreciate the research that obviously went into it (some, even blatantly "false" and obviously tongue in cheek, like "the number of pregnant women in Miami.) This book has a magnificent internal structure, layered, dove-tailing one after another, while all the while, giving hints from the past that make one's skin crawl as they become realized in the future.

I stand by what I said, that Gruber is a more skilled writer than Stephen King.

To whom would I recommend this? Hard to say. The person would have to have a love of the Gothic, the grotesque, and the Grand Guignol. Is that you?

[David Carr · Rating 4 out of 5]

This surprising and compelling novel is written for the intellect, though it is dominated by sorcery and magic so arcane that a lexicon is provided -- but having the words does not mean that the reader can possess or describe these events with rationality or continuity. Something happens, something else happens, then magic happens and the flow of the story slides into another dimension. There are three equally engaging narrative streams here: the story of Jane Doe, an anthropologist living under a stolen identity; a series of journal entries from her time as an observer of peoples who live off the map, in worlds defined by spirits; and a serial, ritual murder case in Miami. Not even the last, dominated by a homicide detective named Jimmy Paz (who appears in other works by Gruber), is pedestrian in the slightest way. The other novels I found resonant as I read these pages – Heart of Darkness, Possession, Poisonwood Bible, The Magus – suggest to me that I was reading while transported. (Fowles is the closest of those four.) In a world suffused with excess rationality, and a limited plane of discourse, it is often useful to be reminded that, “The only way back to normal is through the magic.”

[Elena Bougioukou · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely great and terrifying book. Not only a good thriller that combines the natural scare with the supernatural but also very informative in terms of anthropological/cultural information. It is not an easy book comparing to others, there's a lot of information going around and time goes back and forth, so the reader must pay attention or will get lost and tired. If you want a simple- easy scare, this is not the book for you. If an in-depth analysis of the human psyche, racism, murder and mystical power is what interests you then you're in for a treat.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Πρόκειται για ένα αστυνομικό μυθιστόρημα που το διαβάζει κανείς για να περάσει ευχάριστα η ώρα του. Αυτό που προσφέρει περισσότερο από το συνηθισμένο αστυνομικό μυθιστόρημα είναι μια λεπτομερής περιγραφή της Σαντερία, της «μαύρης μαγείας» όπως την αποκαλούμε, ώστε κανείς να αποκτά πολιτισμικοκοινωνική μόρφωση μέσα από αυτό. Επίσης ο αναγνώστης μαθαίνει πράγματα για το Μα’ι’άμι. Ο τρόπος γραφής του συγγραφέα είναι εθιστικός και η πλοκή πολύ ενδιαφέρουσα ώστε το βιβλίο να αποτελεί έναν από τους καλύτερους εκπροσώπους του είδους του.

[Jonah Gibson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very slick, very smart, and very scary book that defies genre. It's blend of traditional elements of mystery and thriller with a very believable and scientific explanation for what appears to be real supernatural African witchcraft is nothing short of astonishing. The main characters, Jane Doe and detective Jimmy Paz are credible and engaging on multiple levels. The underlying premise is frightening in and of itself, but as layers of historicity, science, and psychology are peeled back to reveal its dark heart you find you're in the middle of the most entertaining anthropology lesson you ever got. Am I making myself clear? I loved this book.

[Carolyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another terrific thriller from Michael Gruber. This was a little spooky, since I had just finished the nonfiction The Spell of the Sensuous by a scientist (psychology, philosophy, anthropology) and slight-of-hand magician who studied and compared notes with shamans and gives them considerable respect and credibility. Tropic of Night is about an anthropologist who studied with shamans and - let's just say it was very easy to suspend my disbelief. I don't often read fantasy or supernatural stuff, but after two of his books, I'm ready to read anything Gruber writes.

[Burnley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read Tropic of Night, first of the Jimmy Paz trilogy, out of order after Valley of Bones. Of the two it's possible I liked Valley of Bones more. But barely. I highly recommend this author and his imaginative, beautifully written work.

[Andy Gavin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book both because it was represented by an agent I was interested in and because it loosely fit the ill-defined cross-genre of my own novel: Supernatural thriller with realistic style and magic. In fact, in this book it's not even 100% clear that the magic is intended to have actually happened -- but I like to think it did. There's a lot of interesting stuff going on here, particularly to my taste. There are three points of view, and not all are as good. One is the female protagonist, a former anthropologist hiding out in Miami from her murderous African shaman ex-husband. The second is the same character, but told in the format of journals written during her field work in Siberia and Africa. And the third is a Miami Cuban-American police detective investigated a series of horrific murders in Miami (perpetrated by the nasty shaman of course). I loved the detective, his investigations of the ritual crime scenes, and the bit of Cubano Miami flavor . The present action protagonist was okay, and the journals were intermittent. When they got into the magic stuff they were good. What I most loved about this book was the creepy and very realistic feel of the mostly Yoruba based shamanistic magic. Overall I enjoyed reading it, but the book could have benefited from some tightening up. The detective investigating this awful ritual crimes was very good too. If you like murder procedurals, and you like creepy well researched voodoo-esque magic, then give this a read.

[Janice · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well, THAT was quite the ride!

Tropic of Night is a thriller/mystery with supernatural elements. It bounces back and forth in time from the viewpoint of Jane Doe. Jane is a bright, wealthy anthropologist. She's studied (though not really understood) a secretive tribe in Siberia, and another (with more understanding) in Africa. She's been in hiding for a couple of years after her return from Africa. She's hiding from her husband, who's apparently fallen wholeheartedly in love with The Dark Side of a particular kind of witchcraft practiced by the obscure African tribe.

In Miami, someone is killing pregnant women in a particularly gruesome way. Iago Paz, detective, is on the case. Turns out that Jane's sister Mary had been killed in that same way in her home a couple of years earlier. Is Jane's husband back and looking for her/continuing the murders???

The threads of this story weave together pretty masterfully. I was initially a bit put off by Jane's character. She was seriously damaged by her time in Africa and just after, and she's been hiding/recovering.

Paz has his own burdens with his mother and his non-present father and his parnter.

I really enjoyed this book. I had no idea how it was going to turn out. The entries from Jane's journal are pretty interesting. I ended up actually being a little more invested in her than in the detective.

Will definitely look at more books by this author. This was great fun, and a bit creepy to boot.

[Aasterisk Seventeen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Michael Gruber is probably tied for first place (with Neil Gaiman) for my most favorite writer. There, I said it.

I'm giving this book 4.99999 stars, and my undying respect. (It's going to look like five stars because it's so damn close). It is a book I've reread several times (along with the other two in the Jimmy Paz story arc). Gruber is a damn genius...I never thought I could care so much about the random bullshit of a cop from Miami, but this story had me hooked.

I feel like Gruber threw a bunch of ideas into a hat and picked out about four, and just wove some damn magic out of them. What seems to some reviewers as disjointed and weird really worked for me; I suppose it's a matter of preference. Plus I love it when an author does research and speaks knowledgeably on a plethora of topics I've barely even heard of...it's invigorating. Gruber crafts stories so well, you don't mind getting schooled. So many ideas in this book prompted me to learn more and I loved that.

I like his other books, but I really wish there were more in the Paz series. Sure, Jimmy is a misogynistic twat sometimes; but he learns and grows over the course of the series—what more could you want?

BTW, I deducted one-ten-millionth of a point because I can't bring myself to call any book perfect—but in my honest opinion, this is as close as it gets.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Definitely not a mystery/thriller that you can just whip through; at times I felt that I was being lectured to. Granted, I like lectures, and I found quite a bit of the anthropology interesting. No doubt Gruber did a massive amount of research to construct this tale. But it will not be too enjoyable for readers who don't want to work. The two main characters are interesting enough, but the constantly changing narrative POV is not my favorite delivery. And it is much less a whodunit as a whatyagonnadoaboutit. Despite the density of the writing, once you get rolling you want to find out what happens. And, along with the police detective Paz, you must open your mind to the possibility of darker, mysterious powers and belief systems far from our own. I liked some of the focus on Cubans, as I was raised in a heavily Cuban area. I am curious to see how he managed to make a sequel, and will likely try it too. Overall, it was an interesting and enjoyable book. I will caution some readers that the victims include pregnant women and unborn babies, which is hard to stomach, so you are forewarned.

[Mike · Rating 1 out of 5]

I just don't get this book. According to the blurbs on the back cover this is the best thing since sliced bread. Second coming of Hemingway or Melville. I don't know. It's his first book, I believe, so I'll cut him some slack and not give it one star. Husband and wife go to Africa and study socery, witchcraft, black magic, whatever. Then he practices his stuff on pregnant women, murdering them, in Florida. Story goes back and forth in time, to and from Africa, with a ton of mumbo-jumbo terms thrown in. Story wasn't even close to being scary. Story ended abruptly (but thank God finally.) Had an unsatisfying culmination of the murderer and the cops, etc. The main cop, Paz, (who is in the follow up books) just wasn't at all likeable. I'm giving it two stars, but hell if I know why, other than this was his first book. Reading this was like taking a foreign language class. A dead foreign language. Wish I hadn't already bought the next book in the series before I read this one. Sigh. Hell, I'm going to change it back to one star.

[Walford · Rating 4 out of 5]

Holy Cow what a story. Gruber is scary good and scary smart. I want to marry his mind.
I don't even read in this genre but once every few years, so color me deeply impressed.
I'm a bit too faint-of-heart for this kind of thing, so I kept having to put it down every chapter and read some fluff, for relief. You have been warned, but read it anyway!

[Pamela Huxtable · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent.

[Catherine Hayden · Rating 3 out of 5]

i had a lot of problems with this book but it’s certainly something I’ll think about for a long time which is more than I can say for wayyy too many other books. this book is reaaally dense and I found the first 2/3s (maybe even 3/4ths…) of the book quite slow because of how dense it was. the author is white and used the n word WAYY too much like in contexts where it just was not necessary at all. the biggest problem I had that impacted my reading of the book was that it truly felt that you had to be like trilingual (or more??) to actually understand what was happening. there’s a glossary in the back of the book but half the words they use aren’t there. half the time it felt like the author was just saying them to show off that he knew these words which really aggregated me. still, I think the story is interesting and as I said I’ll definitely be thinking about it. I understand how someone could reread this book many times.

also, I read the first 50% of this book over like 4.5 months so that probably affected my view of it

edit: ok so apparently Olo isn’t even a real language in Africa so he’s not flexing that he knows them but that he came up with them I guess? idk he tricked me into thinking it was real so that’s cool. a lot of people would probably really be interested in the detail in this language but I felt like it got in the way sometimes

[Mabel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a terrific read. It lived up to everything J.C. Grice said about it. J.C., has Gruber written anything else this good? It was hard to put it down. Characters lived and breathed, plot was interesting and unpredictable, writing wonderful---what more could you ask for? Gory describing the crimes, but the crimes were gory. I didn't feel they were dwelled on more than necessary. Leaves you thinking about people who are revealed to be have a monstrous side to their personality that they keep hidden. It made me think of all the very ugly revelations we have had about various celebrities in the last couple of years. Are there people who don't have souls? It would seem so.

[Rosina Lippi · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read so many really wonderful reviews of this book, I finally found a copy. And the first couple chapters made it clear that this guy can write. On every level. Strong, very visible characters, disturbing, unusual conflicts, and a story that goes zero to sixty like a really, really expensive car.

And it’s interesting. The story is about a woman hiding out in southern Florida. She was once a cultural anthropologist, working with a tribe in Africa for a long period of time on matters of belief systems and magic. There’s a long riff on that word — magic — which probably delivers more core information about cultural anthro and what it sets out to do than anything I’ve ever read in a textbook, and does it in an engaging way.

So you’ve got her on the one hand, Jane calling herself Dolores, and a series of violent murders on the other, ritualized and clearly having something to do with a religion something like, but much older than, Santeria.

On the other hand you’ve got two detectives, one a first generation Cuban immigrant called Iago Paz (points for the name, of course), who puts himself on the black side of the black-white continuum in the Cuban community. The other is an older, wiser, Bible thumping old time Florida cracker with a real talent for homicide work.

Somewhere along the way, though, I got lost. This novel requires a willingness to delve deep into the workings of western African mysticism, and sometimes I found myself unable to go there. This is my lack, I think, and not the novel’s, but it’s also sad that we parted ways. Because I liked it.

[Sabrina · Rating 1 out of 5]

No idea how this has such a high rating. It's 3/4's info dump on something that may totally be made up but I don't have then energy after dragging myself through this book to wikipedia it (if I even cared to by the end I was ready to cry if it would smudge the pages of this crap). The "story" such as it was only covered about 1/4 of the book and it was beyond believable for the amount of crap that was being shoveled on you.

All the characters (who were all trying to be a different race then they were) besides the abused 4 year old were flat, racist despicable people with 0 emotion. This book was written in a clinical way there are no emotions what so ever. The characters feel nothing, they don't grow or change in any way and there is no emotion in what they are going through or what is happening around them. You can't connect to any of them and I felt nothing for them. By the end of the book I was wishing for the apocalypse to come and wipe everyone out. It would have been a better ending that way too.

The "thriller" part was non-existent and the "mystery" easy to guess despite the author trying to withhold parts of it by not naming people.

I will not be reading any further books in this series or by this author.

[Granny · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't read too much fiction, but a friend whose taste I trust passed this one on to me and it was excellent.

It's a moving story about a woman who has had her reality shifted. She started out as a child of privilege in a wealthy east coast family, and became an anthropologist in college. After marriage, she continued her studies with her husband, but their trip to Africa changed both of them - in some frightening ways.

The book shifts between her journals from the African trip and her current situation, which is becoming more difficult and dangerous day by day. I won't spoil the story by telling you more, I'll let it unwind for itself.

I will say the the Santeria and Voodoun as accurate so far as my knowledge extends, the African magic I cannot speak for.

While parts of the story call for leaps of faith (so to speak) and there is a murder committed by the narrator which is skipped over rather lightly, the characters are so engaging that one is inclined to forgive these lapses.

A very engrossing story, well written and entertaining.

[Yves Fey · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the most unusal and brilliant thrillers I've encountered. And no, don't read it if you only like a simple straight forward narrative. The plot is quite decipherable, but the book weaves together the present stories of the two main protagonists Paz and Jane Doe, with the "past" via Jane's journal. I think the construction is almost flawless. The prose is gorgeous, but without sacrificing the suspense. The book lagged only the tiniest bit toward the end, then picked up again for a magnificent final confrontation. It also manages to be horrifying without ever feeling like sleazy horror, an amazing feat in itself. If you liked The Skull Mantra, or Smila's Sense of Snow, try this book, which also transport you out of the ordinary world. I did have some trouble with the morality of the twist at the end. There was something the author felt was more forgiveable than I did. Nonetheless, this is a knockout book and I eagerly await whatever the author does next.