by Michael Gruber
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Product Description
Jane Doe lives in the shadows under an assumed name. A once-promising anthropologist and an expert on shamanism, everyone thinks she's dead. Or so she hopes. Jimmy Paz is a Cuban-American police detective. Straddling two cultures, he understands things others cannot. When the killings start -- a series of ritualistic murders -- all of Miami is terrified. Especially Jane. She knows the dark truth that Jimmy must desperately search to uncover. As their lives slowly interconnect, Jane and Paz are soon caught in a cataclysmic battle between good and an evil as unimaginable as it is terrifying . . .
Amazon.com Review
This debut thriller should come with a warning--do not pick up if you have anything else planned for as long as it takes to read it! Tropic of Night is a dramatic, stylish, smart, and very strongly plotted novel, mixing anthropology, ethnography, sorcery, mayhem, and murder in an intriguing and wholly captivating story that ranges from Mali to Siberia, Nigeria to Miami, and never lets up. Jane Doe is a smart but listless graduate student when she encounters Marcel Vierchau, a French scholar whose lover she quickly becomes, following him to the strange world of the Chenka, a mysterious sect of Siberian shamans in whose society she quickly loses her scholarly objectivity--and nearly her life. Returning without Vierchau to the comfortable world of her wealthy family, she meets and marries DeWitt Moore, a black poet who accompanies her to Africa on a field trip that turns him into a powerful shaman, awakens her own abilities to commune with the spirits of the Yoruba sorcerers, and again comes close to destroying her. Wary of Moore's new strength, she stages her own death and becomes a faceless member of Miami's underclass, but just when she believes she's safe from his reach, a series of bloody ritual murders of pregnant Miami women convince her that she is once again his target--and that anyone who comes between them, including her adopted daughter, will also meet a terrifying end. Michael Gruber delivers a fabulous, wholly original read that will linger in the reader's mind long after the last page is turned! --Jane Adams
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 A spellbinding tale deliciously spun and served up for the reader, 2010-07-29
This book transcends any particular genre category but manages to combine elements of many: adventure, crime/mystery, magical realism, psychological suspense, anthropology, mythology, and perhaps even some others. I've read thousands of books over my 50 years as a reader, and I would unhesitatingly place this book, as well as the two follow-up books involving Jimmy Paz ("Valley of Bones" and "Night of the Jaguar") in my favorite top 15 books. I have also listened to them on audio CD, and the images unfold before your eyes like you are watching a play. As I listened, I thought, on more than one occasion: "How can a book be THIS GOOD??" Michael Gruber is a storyteller of unparalleled talent -- his research of the topics on which he writes is astute for sure, but it's the spellbinding way he unfurls a story that is so captivating. I quite often found myself alternately laughing out loud at the clever tongue-in-cheek commentary, holding my breath in fear, and ultimately sitting in my car in the driveway listening to the audio book long after I'd arrived home simply to hear "what happens next."
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Thrilling, and fascinating to boot, 2010-07-27
Gruber merges (seemingly authentic) anthropological observations and seat-of-the-pants storytelling in this very unusual, totally riveting, take on the detective novel. Towards the end of ToN, the whiff of the supernatural is a little stronger than Publisher's Weekly would have you believe. But the setup is so intelligent that the ending at least seems credible -- albeit stretching the limits of credibility. ToN is unputdownable, a masterful piece of fiction.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Spellbinding, 2009-12-29
I love Michael Gruber and I'm going slowly through his books. I'm afraid if I rush through them that I'll be lost until he writes another. Tropic of Night spans decades, civilizations and parallel realities while drawing you in more and more, until you can't unwind yourself at the end. Gruber has vast knowledge about the wide world and what goes on in it, both past and present, but he never patronizes the reader. His characters are fleshed out with sensitivity and compassion, and his dry wit is unmistakable. But enough about Gruber. Tropic of Night will chill your bones. It is terrifying. A great mystery and a wonderful study of human frailties and, ultimately, love. That's the amazing thing about Gruber. He writes mysteries, but his books transcend the genre. They are full of human folly, adventure, intrigue and the complex bonds between families and humankind in general. Once you get into Tropic of Night, you're done. Send your spouse/kids/etc. to a movie without you and enjoy.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
It'll Knock Your Socks Off, 2009-12-18
I'm not into sorcery, witchcraft, Santeria, or Africa. (Or at least I wasn't.)
But I LOVED this book.
Michael Gruber is simply a superb writer: witty, elegant, intellectually interesting, artful....you name it. His prose is better than that of most "literary" novelists, and he combines that with suspenseful, intelligent plots and great characterization. Where he leads, I will follow, all of my usual skepticism turned off at the pump. He's one of fewer than five authors I buy in hardback as soon as the book comes out.
Read this book, and the ones that follow. You won't be disappointed.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 meh., 2009-12-15
not that great. pretty well written, but "thought provoking"? Not really. Literary thriller? Not to me. Too much silly action in the end, and I had to suspend my belief a whole heck of a lot.
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