Valley of Bones: A Novel (Jimmy Paz, 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.

Denver Post

“The Stephen King of crime writing.”

Washington Post

“TROPIC OF NIGHT and VALLEY OF BONES [are] miracles .... and among the essential novels of recent years.”

Entertainment Weekly

“Grade: A. A feast of rich characters ... globe-trotting plotline, and an exploration of faith’s place in our world.”

Cleveland Plain Dealer

“Dazzling, literate and downright scary .... mesmerizing, multilayered, page-turning new novel. Masterful ... Don’t miss this book.”

Rocky Mountain News

“An engrossing and shocking story ... equal in depth and breadth to THE DA VINCI CODE ... Grade: A.”

Seattle Times

“Done with such intelligence, style and understated dread.”

Daily News

“Uncommon intrigue steeped in murder and mysticism … An intoxicating thriller.”

Chicago Tribune

“[A] startling and original thriller ... Gruber is a gifted and natural storyteller.”

Miami Herald

“An intriguing intellectual thriller.”

San Francisco Chronicle

“Engrossing ... Gruber is one to watch.”

Seattle Post-Intelligencer

“Powerful.”

Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

“Evocative prose, an erudite author, spellbinding subject matter and totally original characters add up to make this one a knockout.”

Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)

“No second-novel slump here. Gruber has drawn even with John Sandford and has power to spare.”

From the Back Cover

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.

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.

About the Author

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

Reviews

News