From Publishers Weekly
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 uneven 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 and his unclear characterization. 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.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Kirkus Reviews
A dark and disturbing foray into voodoo-terror by a master of the religious-conspiracy thriller (The Brotherhood of the Tomb, 1990; The Ninth Buddha, 1989, etc.). From the opening pages, in which Haitian-born heroine Angelina Hammel finds a host of corpses hidden beneath the floorboards of her Brooklyn apartment, Easterman spins a morbid tale of unrelenting evil that's a far and eerie cry from the high adventure of his earlier work. In sinuous prose tinged with despair, the horrors pile up: one body is trapped in a living death--a zombi?; Angelina's ethnologist husband, Rick, is found murdered and mutilated in a nearby park; Reuben Abrams, the cop assigned to Angelina, uncovers a weird sanctum of evil beneath the Brooklyn waterfront, full of spiders, more bodies, the mummy of a sorcerer, and half of a golden disc. This disc, Abrams learns, is the talisman of the Seventh Order, a reactionary, voodoo-based global conspiracy that includes ``senators, judges, industrialists,'' and that prophesies ``the resurrection of all things when the true king'' sits on his voodoo throne. Members of the Order soon give violent chase to Angelina, whom they rightly believe holds information--derived from her husband's research--threatening to the Order. The brutal murder of Abrams's parents (partly repaid by the cop with a syringe through the assassin's eyeball) is only one atrocity of many as the duo, aided by a secret federal anti-Order cabal, fend off attack. Prompted by the cabal, Abrams and Angelina, now uneasy lovers, fly to the Order's homeground, Haiti--where the action turns darker still, a febrile shock-scape of voodoo ceremonies, torture, and death (and one whiff of Easterman past--an extraneous but rousing escapade during a hurricane) that ends in the bleakest possible way. More horror novel than thriller, grim and unforgiving, and resonant with menace, decay, and the stuff nightmares are made of. --
Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
