willemite

This is the third in Gruber’s series about Jimmy Paz, a Cuban American detective in Miami. It is the least of the three.

After an American missionary is killed in remotest Colombia, a local, native shaman, Moie, seeks and receives a vision, in which the deceased cleric offers him four names, identifying those primarily responsible for a planned, illegal, clear-cutting of native lands. Moie sets out on a journey to find the four and try to get them to desist. He is aided in this quest by a powerful native spirit, that of a Jaguar. He lands with an eco-activist collective, a mixed group of true believers and fools. With the help of some group members, he confronts the four. After he is turned away, the responsible are targeted. Moie is filled with the spirit and transforms into a jaguar, a very angry jaguar. The four are soon shredded.

Jimmy Paz, married, the father of a young girl, and now a full-time chef at his family restaurant. Is recruited to look into the spooky killings. Gruber brings us back into the world of Santeria so well illustrated in the first two Jimmy Paz novels. The payload of this series of Gruber’s novels is the sub-culture of Santeria and related spiritual goings on that occur in the Miami culture. He has extended that spiritual reach to other parts of the world before, Africa, Siberia, and now South America. It is a Magical Realism world and is effectively done. Yet, this time around, it seemed lacking, somehow. Jimmy’s wife was a real bitch in this one, taking a hard line against his Santerian involvement, despite having had experience enough to know that in this fictional universe the spiritual and the real are very closely entwined. That was jarring. Jimmy being full-time at mom’s restaurant was also a bit hard to accept. Finally, the book felt much less novel than the prior two. A good read but disappointing.

After having finished it, I learned from a source at Harper that the first two books had not done very well in the market and Gruber had been instructed to basically dumb the books down. He was told to take out much of the more intellectual material. It shows. The shape-shifting shaman is not exactly a new notion. The ultimate bad guy here has a motive that is credible, but the manipulation involved in getting others to do his dirty work was tough to accept. It will be interesting to see how this one does in the market. Will Harper actually promote it? I do not believe they spent any money promoting the first pair. It would be a shame if Gruber is directed away from what had been a very satisfying path.