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Publisher:
Harper Torch / HarperCollins |
Release
Date: January 27, 2004 |
ISBN:
1-89140-08-2-7 |
Awards:
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Format
Reviewed: Trade Paperback |
Buy
it at Amazon |
Read
an Excerpt |
Genre:
Mystery – Police Procedural |
Reviewed:
2004 |
Reviewer:
Kristin Johnson |
Reviewer
Notes: Reviewer Kristin Johnson is the author of CHRISTMAS
COOKIES ARE FOR GIVING, co-written with Mimi Cummins and ORDINARY
MIRACLES: My Incredible Spiritual, Artistic and Scientific Journey,
co-written with Sir Rupert A.L. Perrin, M.D. |
Copyright
MyShelf.com |
|
Tropic
of Night
By Michael Gruber
The
title of this stunning debut mystery has echoes of Henry Miller.
This is appropriate, since Tropic of Night does for Cuba,
Africa, anthropology, and the politics of race and religion what
Miller did for Cole Porter-era Bohemian Paris.
What’s
the bad news? Michael Gruber tries to take a leaf from his sorcerer
subjects and tries verbal and character slight-of-hand to see how
many times he can sneak in racial commentary bordering on unintentional
self-parody. Liberal whites have white guilt. Blacks raised by white
adoptive parents wish for a black Hitler. Upper-class Cubans look
down on Cubans who look like they might fix the transmission on
the professor’s Lexus, but in reality, like Jimmy Paz, are
tough Black/Cuban police officers dating white women against their
Catholic immigrant mothers’ wishes. And it is unlikely that
a white woman who would stick her neck out this way for an abused
Cuban girl, much less adopt her and risk jail by murdering the girl’s
mother.
However,
Jane Clare Doe marries a brilliant angry Black male and immerses
herself in the real Africa, where her poet husband makes her out
to be something out of Amos and Andy and where her problem is not
race but, as in her visit to Chenka, Russia, with lover Marcel Vierchau,
her inability to connect with and even have sex with the spirit
world.
Jane’s
husband turns to demon summoning to get rid of Whitey.
Jimmy
Paz’s “quaint old redneck” partner Cletis Barlow,
a non-racist, quotes the Bible in a way that makes the reader believe
he lives the Word. But even Cletis isn’t spared the nightmare
of history. Moore’s demonic possession turns him temporarily
into a Grand Wizard.
Jimmy
Paz discovers his mother, Margarita Paz, is actually a practitioner
of the Cuban religion Santeria (recently featured on an episode
of TV’s Law & Order: Special Victims Unit). Margarita
joins with Jimmy and Jane in the battle between good and evil.
Like
the illusions created by dark sorcery, nothing is what it seems
in this mystery. Jane does wicked aikido. Jimmy and Jane don’t
end up together. Finally, Jimmy, like the reader, becomes a believer.
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