Valley of Bones: A Novel (Jimmy Paz Book 2)

Critically acclaimed, bestselling author Michael Gruber's second novel to feature police detective Jimmy Paz is a chilling and remarkable work of intelligence and imagination. After a wealthy oilman plunges ten stories to his death from the balcony of a Miami hotel, Paz and the young cop who witnessed the fall discover a woman on her knees praying in the dead man's room. A motive and strong evidence point to the woman—Emmylou Dideroff—as the murderer, but she insists that she's innocent of the crime, while freely admitting her guilt in numerous other criminal acts and abominations. As her shocking confessions blur the lines between charity and vengeance, delusion and reality, Paz finds himself drawn once again into the unexplained . . . and into a collision with an evil of inconceivable power.

Amazon.com Review

This top-notch novel confirms Gruber's place as a gifted writer who stretches the conventional bounds of the genre by placing the mysteries of faith and religious experience and the complexities of the human mind as well as spirit at the center of his work. It's a taut, compelling whodunit that's as far from a typical detective procedural as good is from evil and a worthy follow-up to his acclaimed debut (Tropic of Night) that also features Cuban-American cop Jimmy Paz. Here Gruber tells a mesmerizing tale of Emmylou Dideroff, who communes with saints and whose checkered past includes stints as a hooker, drug dealer, and the leader of a band of Sudanese freedom fighters. But did she kill the Arab businessman on a government "watch list" who plunged to his death from a Miami hotel? While that's the incident that brings her to Paz's attention, it's only one of his questions about this strange woman, whose unsettling "confessions" stir up the detective's confusion about his own deepest beliefs. Emmylou is as fascinating and fully realized as Jane Doe, the memorable protagonist of Gruber's first book--so too is Lorna Wise, the psychologist brought in to assess Emmylou's sanity, whose personal and professional lives are turned totally upside down by her involvement in the case and her relationship with Paz. This is a smart, riveting, wholly original and thoroughly fascinating book that's impossible to put down and leaves the reader with only one question--when is this author's next one coming out? --Jane Adams

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Gruber's new mystery/thriller more than fulfills the promise of his dazzling Tropic of Night (2003), a critical and commercial success and his first book published under his own name. The story emerges from three directions: the POV of Cuban-American Miami cop Jimmy Paz; pages from the book Faithful Unto Death: The Story of the Nursing Sisters of the Blood of Christ by Sr. Benedicta Cooley; and a series of handwritten notebooks, The Confessions of Emmylou Dideroff. Gruber brings back Paz ("a neatly built, caramel-colored man, in a beautifully cut gray-green silk and linen suit" and one of the smartest, coolest, most intriguing cops working the pages of American thrillers these days) from Tropic to investigate the death of Arab oil trader Jabir Akran al-Muwalid, who's been bonked on the head with a piston rod and thrown off the balcony of his hotel room. Inside al-Muwalid's room, Paz finds Emmylou Dideroff kneeling on the floor, having a one-sided conversation with St. Catherine of Siena. The rod belongs to Emmylou, so she's assumed to be the killer; she's put into a mental hospital under the care of Paz's new psychiatrist girlfriend. Emmylou's written confessions tell the horrifying but riveting tale of growing up with an insane mother and a stepfather who molested her, as well as her adventures as a whore, drug dealer and, after joining the Nursing Sisters of the Blood of Christ, a tribal leader in Africa. Readers will find each of the stories—Paz's, Emmylou's and that of the founder of the Nursing Sisters—equally fascinating. Evocative prose, an erudite author, spellbinding subject matter and totally original characters add up to make this one a knockout. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

The first cousin of and longtime ghostwriter for Robert Tanenbaum dishes up another meaty supernatural thriller featuring Miami cop Jimmy Paz in the follow-up to Tropic of Night (2003). But instead of voodoo, this story turns on mysterious Catholic ways--with able assists from a few Santeria spirits when God and Lucifer prove too much for Paz and his psychologist girlfriend, Lorna Wise, to handle on their own. Gruber intricately weaves together three compelling stories: the mysterious murder of a Sudanese oilman; the life and times of Emmylou Dideroff, the religious former white-trash hooker suspected of killing the oilman; and the history of the Nursing Sisters of the Blood of Christ, a Catholic order of battlefield medic-nuns whom Emmylou has joined. As might be expected, the story takes its sweet time getting up to full speed. But once it finally does, the characters--especially Emmylou--spirit readers along toward a richly rendered Joan of Arc meets Lawrence of Arabia climax. The endearing odd-couple romance that simmers between Afro-Cuban ladies' man Paz and sexually repressed hypochondriac Lorna offers further pleasure. Frank SennettCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

From the Back Cover

The body of a wealthy oilman plunges ten stories from the balcony of a Miami hotel, and is impaled on an iron fence below. In the dead man's room, Jimmy Paz, the famed detective who solved the grisly Voodoo Murders, and Tito Morales, a young cop who witnessed the fall, find a woman on her knees, engaged in intimate conversation with Saint Catherine of Siena. Emmylou Dideroff had a strong motive for murder, and the evidence against her is overwhelming -- but she insists she's innocent of the crime, while freely admitting her guilt in numerous other amoral and unspeakable acts. And the shocking confessions of this complex enigma -- abused victim or vengeful whore, god-touched prophetess or delusional psychopath, demon or saint -- are leading Paz, Morales, and psychologist Lorna Wise into a terrifying dance with the Devil himself.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Valley of BonesA NovelBy Michael GruberHarperCollins Publishers, Inc.Copyright © 2009 Michael GruberAll right reserved.ISBN: 9780061650741Chapter OneThe cop happened to look up at just the right instant or he would have missed it, not the actual impalement, but the fall itself. It took him a disorienting second to realize what he was seeing, the swelling black mass against the white stone and glass of the hotel facade, and then it was finished, with a sound that he knew he would carry to his grave.After that, he took a minute or so to sit on the bumper of his car with his head down low, so as not to pollute the crime scene with his own vomit, and then reported the event on his radio. He called it in as a 31, which was the Miami PD code for a homicide, although it could have been an accident or a jumper. But it felt like a homicide, for reasons the cop could not then explain. While he waited for the sirens, he looked up at the row of balconies that made up the face of the Trianon Hotel. The thought briefly crossed his mind that he ought to go and check the guy out to make sure that he was actually dead, that perhaps the wrought iron fleur-de-lis spearheads protruding from the man's neck, chest, and groin had missed all the vital organs in their paths.He was a dutiful officer, but this was his first fresh corpse, and he decided not to investigate more closely than a couple of yards, telling himself that it was better not to contaminate the crime scene. The corpse had been a good-looking guy, he thought, leather-dark skin but aquiline features: hooked nose, thin lips, a little spade beard. There was something foreign about the face, although the officer could not have said what it was.Turning away from it with some relief, he inspected the facade of the hotel, noting that there were three vertical columns of balconies adorning the twelve floors of the building, which was capped by a copper roof styled after a French château. That was the theme of the Trianon Hotel, as much French as would fit: besides the roof, there were gilt cornices, coats of arms, New Orleans-style wrought iron on the balconies, and, of course, fleurs-de-lis on the iron fence that surrounded the south face of the property. People were coming out of the hotel now, frightened men in the hotel's white livery, a few guests from the lobby. A woman's shriek recalled the cop to his duty, and he herded them all back into the cool interior.A broad man in a double-breasted cream suit accosted him at this point and announced himself as the manager. He knew who it was, a guest, 10 D, and gave a name. The cop wrote it down in his notebook. The manager departed, dabbing at his mouth with a handkerchief, and the cop resumed his study of the facade, although his eye kept drifting over to the victim. The flies arrived and got to their buzzing tasks, and shortly after that an ambulance pulled up. The paramedics emerged, took in the scene, declared the man officially dead, made wiseass paramedic remarks, and went back to their bus to wait in the cool of the AC. The crime scene van arrived, and the CSUs started to assemble their various implements of investigation and their cameras, while making some of the same cracks (that's what I call piercings; sorry, he can't come to the phone right now) that the paramedics had made, and after a little while an unmarked white Chevy pulled up, and out of it came a neatly built, caramel colored man, in a beautifully cut gray-green silk and linen suit. The cop sighed. Of course it had to be him."Morales?" asked the man. The cop nodded, and the man held out his hand to be shaken, saying, "Paz.""Uh-huh," said Morales. He knew who Jimmy Paz was, as did everyone on the Miami PD, as did everyone in Metropolitan Dade County who owned a television. Morales had not, however, met him professionally until now. Both men were first-generation Cuban immigrant stock, but the patrolman considered himself white, like 98 percent of the Cuban migration to America, and Paz was not white, yet also undeniably Cuban. It was disconcerting, even without the tug of racism, which Morales was conscious of trying to resist."You're the first response on this?" Paz was not looking at the corpse. He was looking at Morales, with a pleasant smile on his face and little lights glinting in his hazel eyes. He was looking at a man in his early twenties, with a fine-featured beardless face, in the complexion usually called olive, but which is more like parchment, a face that might be choirboy open when relaxed but was now guarded, tense, the intelligent dark eyes focused on the detective so hard they almost squinted."No, I was here already. Somebody called in a disturbance at the hotel. It was a hoax call. I was just about to pull out when he came down.""You saw him drop?""Yeah."Paz looked up at the face of the hotel and saw what Morales had seen. It was perfectly clear from which balcony the victim had begun his fatal descent. All the balconies but one had their glass doors closed against the afternoon heat. In the single exception the door was open and the white curtains were flapping like flags. Paz counted silently."It looks like the tenth floor," he said. Now for the first time he inspected the corpse. "Nice shoes," he said. "Lorenzo Banfi's. Nice suit too. A dresser. Tell me, why did you call it in as a homicide?""He didn't yell on the way down," said Morales, surprising himself with this statement. Paz grinned at him, a catlike grin, and Morales felt his own face breaking into a smile ...Continues...Excerpted from Valley of Bonesby Michael Gruber Copyright © 2009 by Michael Gruber. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

From AudioFile

Gruber's story is a strange little tale of murder, warfare, and religious epiphany. It is greatly enhanced in the telling by Kate Forbes and Jonathan Davis, who do more than trade off the male and female roles. Forbes narrates the diary of Emmylou Dideroff, a young woman who has experienced enough drama to last several lifetimes. Davis performs the portions of the book that recount Dideroff's current circumstances, which include murder. Both readers seamlessly slip in and out of Cuban, Appalachian, African, and Middle Eastern accents like pros, making what could be a complicated mystery a joy to follow even in the abridged version. M.S. © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

About the Author

New York Times bestselling author Michael Gruber is the author of five acclaimed novels. He lives in Seattle.

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