Tropic of Night

Rating:
Summary: HUGE DISAPPOINTMENT!!!
Review: I really resent it when reviewers tell me what a great read a book is & then I get buried in a dumpster of overripe & overabundant verbiage.

Actually I should have been suspicious when I saw that the author is a PHD in marine biology. If doctoral candidates excel at anything beyond their area of academic discipline it's the ability to fill hundreds of pages with impressive-sounding information - chunks of tantalizing data that may or may not relate to the topic at hand.

Which is exactly the problem with this book. It starts off terrifically. Great first sentence, dynamite action, very specific point of view.

But then those gimmicky alternate threads intrude. A journal to dispense the lead character's back-story (& to dispell any mystery about her that the primary thread builds up) full of the cliches of bodice-rippers: Incredibly handsome & gifted highly fallbible men, etc. A colorful representative of a double-underclass with his own cliche-ridden milieu. By the middle of the book all 3 threads become burdened with stupefylingly dense doses of more information about obscure mystic tribes from Siberia to Africa than I ever wanted to know about - from a mystery/thriller anyway. I've had my quota of Levi-Strauss & Unmberto Eco for a lifetime, thanks.

Rating:
Summary: Never wanted this to end
Review: 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. Upper-class Cubans look down on Cubans who look like they might fix the transmission on the professor's Lexus. Still, there has to be one flaw in this big bad voodoo diamond of a mystery. Like the illusions created by dark sorcery, nothing is what it seems in this mystery. Jane Doe, the heroine, does wicked aikido. Jimmy Paz, the hunky detective hero (who 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), and Jane don't end up together. Finally, Jimmy, like the reader, becomes a believer in magic.

This is also a terrific exploration of the subcultures of Miami, Florida.




Rating:
Summary: Fantastic Book!
Review: I listened to it on cassette. I couldn't wait to get in my car to hear what came next. I'm not for sure why a couple of the reviews found it to be 'tedious'. It is a solid story that is extremely compelling. I can't believe this is Gruber's first novel.