NIGHT OF THE SEVENTH DARKNESS by Daniel Easterman - FIRST EDITION BOOK
See all titles by Daniel Easterman.
Modern-day voodoo practices, a tentacular right-wing political
conspiracy and its connection to slave-trading dynasties in
18th-century Haiti provide the mysteries around which Easterman (
Brotherhood of the Tomb ) fashions this thriller. The impact of
intriguing details about the slave trade and zombie lore and moments of
high-pitched terror (set, for instance, in skeleton-littered,
centuries-old secret tunnels beneath a Brooklyn, N.Y., wharfside
warehouse), is diminished by Easterman's penchant for melodrama. Haitian-born Angelina Hammel lives in
Brooklyn with her white ethnologist husband, who is murdered shortly
after they return from a field trip to Zaire.
When she discovers a
collection of corpses beneath her living room floor, Lt. Reuben Abrams
is assigned the case. Easterman's complex, far-ranging plot takes the
two of them to bed and, after a series of violent murders, to Haiti as
semi-informed operatives of a secret alliance of U.S. government
officials--and as targets of a more powerful, high-ranking cabal.
In
that exotic setting, murders accrue--during an ancient night-long
ritual; on the sea floor as a hurricane rages; in a church--leading to
revelations about voodoo's sacred origins and a violent, unsurprising
ending.
