"Tropic of Night" is one of the best novels I've ever read. It has everything: suspense, character, spiritual significance, and superb writing.
Author Michael Gruber is the one who actually wrote the "Carp family" series of thrillers that have sold with Robert K. Tanenbaum named as author. Tanenbaum always thanked Gruber at the start of each of those novels. I don't remember the exact quote - "for doing all the real work" or something like that.
At any rate, the last Tanenbaum novel, "Hoax," lacks this acknowledgment. It also lacks any semblance of good writing. The characters have gone flat. All that's left is a fairly decent plot. That's not enough.
Plowing through a fog of disappointment, reading "Hoax," I went to Amazon.com to leave a negative review. That's when I learned for sure that Michael Gruber was the writer who'd made the previous "Tanenbaum" novels worth reading.
I searched for anything else by Gruber and found this first novel under his own name. What a book it is. It's about the nature of reality - shades of Joseph Chilton Pearce's "The Crack in the Cosmic Egg." It's about original participation - shades of Barfield's "Saving the Appearances." It's about Africa and western "reality." Oh, and more. If you can only read one novel this year, this is the one to choose.
Here's the link again (via my Amazon associates account) to Michael Gruber's "Tropic of Night."
5:41:47 PM 
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