Valley of Bones

by Michael Gruber

Published 1 January 2005

After a Sudanese businessman falls ten stories from his hotel-room balcony, Paz investigates his murder and finds a most unlikely suspect -- an otherworldly creature named Emmylou Dideroff who claims to commune with the holy saints. Her "Confessions", scribbled in a series of notebooks, tell a remarkable tale of a woman from the wrong side of the tracks - thief, drug dealer, prostitute - who would be called into the service of God in a most unusual way. Might this "service" include the killing of the Sudanese businessman, whose knowledge of oil reserves may be contributing to African genocide?

It is left to police psychologist Lorna Wise to determine whether Emmylou is legally insane. But when people associated with her start turning up dead, both Paz and Lorna begin to suspect that there's something much larger at stake than Emmylou's guilt or innocence -- and that the search for justice might bring them up against an even more elemental force ...


Tropic of Night

by Michael Gruber

Published 4 March 2003

Jane Doe is nothing, a shadow. Once a promising anthropologist, she's now hiding from an unimaginable horror. Miami police detective Jimmy Paz knows that Jane is connected to the ritualistic murders terrifying the city. Together, they must battle a psychopath whose shamanistic powers can alter reality itself.

One of the most terrifying thrillers since SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, TROPIC OF NIGHT pits 32-year-old anthropologist Jane Doe against her murderous ex-husband, Malcolm DeWitt, a shaman so skilled in the art of African witchcraft that he quickly becomes Miami's most feared serial killer.

After spending years researching shamanism and santaria in the heart of Africa, Jane is on the run; she faked her own suicide and is hiding in Miami under an assumed identity. Meanwhile, a Cuban-American police detective named Jimmy Paz is investigating a series of ritualistic murders. Though there are witnesses, they are able to recall almost nothing, as though their memory of that moment has been erased - as if a spell has been cast on each of them. The only thing they do remember is that the man closely resembled Miami police detective Jimmy Paz...

When Jane hears about the first of these murders, she realizes instantly that the black magic she'd witnessed in her previous life has returned to haunt her; and that, one way or another, fate has always had this moment in store for her. Jane Doe will play a crucial role in a cataclysmic battle between good and a kind of evil unimaginable to the Western mind.

E-book extra: Afterword by Michael Gruber