Night of the Jaguar Michael Gruber
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Night of the Jaguar
Michael Gruber
William Morrow
Hardcover
384 pages
April 2006
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Night Of The Jaguar is the final installment of Michael Gruber’s Jimmy Paz trilogy. The other two in his triumvirate of supernatural thrillers are Valley of the Bones and Tropic Of Night. This book takes place seven years after 2005’s Valley of The Bones ends. Though this one has the less-than-bright gofer for the Forest Planet Alliance Jenny Simpson and Professor Cooksey as major characters, the readers know it is really all about Paz. In Night Of The Jaguar, Paz has retired from the police department and is working in his mother’s Cuban restaurant. He is also married to psychologist Lorna Wise and raising their young child. The opening pages suck you into the story as Paz is having a wicked dream.
“Jimmy Paz sits up in his bed, folding from the waist like a jackknife with his heart thumping so hard he can almost hear it over the whine of the air-conditioning. A moment of disorientation here: the dream has been so vivid. But he looks about him and accepts that he is in his bedroom in his house in South Miami, Florida; he can make up the familiar shapes in the real glow from the digital clock and the paler beams of moonlight slipping through the blinds, and he can feel the warm loom of his wife’s body beside him. The clock tells him it is three-ten in the morning. Paz hadn’t had a dream like this is in seven years, but than he used to have them all the time.”
Soon Miami businessmen are found murdered with the only clue being huge cat (as in big game cats - leopard, lion, jaguar) footprints left at the scene. Jimmy Paz is then forced out of retirement to help the police solve this baffling case. The deeper he gets into the case, the more he and his daughter, Amelia, have dreams of the big cats that roam the jungles. Paz eventually finds an Indian from Columbia in Moie who gets involved with Jenny and her activist group. The deeper he probes, the more his and his family’s life is in danger. With a heady mix of Santeria mysticism, police procedural, and snappy banter between characters on everything from physics to anthropology Night Of The Jaguar will fulfill the needs of fans looking for a thrilling supernatural read.
Originally published on Curled Up With A Good Book at www.curledup.com. © Bobby Blades, 2006
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Other books by Michael Gruber:
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