Tropic of Night - Softcover

Gruber, Michael

3.86

2,023 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0330426842 ISBN 13: 9780330426848

Publisher: Pan Books, 2004

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"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.

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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

About the Author:

Michael Gruber, a former marine biologist, restaurant cook, federal government official, and political speechwriter, traveled a fascinating path toward his latest occupation as the bestselling author of critically acclaimed thrillers such as The Book of Air and Shadows.

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