For those who haven’t yet read his novels, Michael Gruber’s Jimmy Paz trilogy is like settling down with a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel – if it was rewritten by James M. Cain. More Spenser than Karl Kolchak, Jimmy Paz, a Miami police detective, is the perfect fictional anchor for these Florida-based thrillers that deal with the supernatural, questions of faith and the mutability of what we call reality.
Like the books before, “Night of the Jaguar” contains multiple story lines – and hero Paz doesn’t make an appearance until Page 50 in this book.
Believing himself called forth by the ghost of a dead Colombian priest, a poor native named Moie takes on the task of completing the religious man’s mission: protecting the rain forest from developers.
When Moie turns up in Miami he is befriended by young environmentalists who work for the Forest Planet Alliance, including Jenny Simpson, a seeming bit player whose role takes on greater importance. Moie soon becomes the center of suspicion when some Miami businessmen who had a hand in developing land in Colombia, and are planning to do more of the same, are murdered in gruesome ways.
Now in retirement, Paz, who has decided to run a restaurant, has been having dreams again, something he thought he’d finished with seven years ago. One dream involves a man in an animal skin hunting down a victim’s killers in a tropical forest. Another dream involves a jaguar that threatens his 7-year-old daughter, Amelia.
Persuaded to take on the mystery of who is eviscerating Miami businessmen, Paz finds clues that point to Moie yet make little sense (such as footprints that match his but reveal the weight of the “perp” to be 450 pounds, an impossibility for the rail-thin Moie). And two of the businessmen who died had claw marks on their front doors.
Is Moie a shape-shifter? A god? Something else entirely? Once again, Paz is drawn into the world of the “supernatural,” although he doesn’t believe in the supernatural, only things that have not yet been understood by science and mankind. And his tale of detection intersects with Moie’s sacred mission and that of young Jenny Simpson.
Gruber’s final twist, which comes after the climax, is the perfect ending to this noirish tale of the delicate balance between the supernatural and science, reason and faith, nature and civilization.
Gruber’s Jimmy Paz trilogy walks a fine line between the worlds of horror and crime fiction, making good use of both well-worn, formu-
laic elements, such as a retired cop opening a restaurant, and elements so original, like the folklore of the Colombian Runiya, that his novels are elevated to the level of literature. But we’re not talking about the highfalutin idea of literature – the kind many recognize by the title, but few have read – but the kind of literature that is enjoyed by the masses and admired by academics for years to come.
If there is a downside to Gruber’s trilogy, it’s that readers who have come to love Jimmy Paz may not enjoy the idea of limited series. Perhaps Gruber (whose only other book thus far, “The Witch’s Boy,” was a children’s book) will change his mind and keep Paz alive in future novels. Stranger things have happened. After all, as the author himself observed in an earlier Paz novel: The universe is queerer than we suppose.
Dorman T. Shindler is a freelance writer from Missouri.
Night of the Jaguar
By Michael Gruber
Morrow, 384 pages, $24.95
