In Dead of Night, a novel by the author of the acclaimed thriller The Killing of the Saints, Alex Abella features the return of Charlie Morell, the fierce and impassioned Cuban-American lawyer -- And sometime private investigator.
Charlie Morell finds himself once again facing a landscape of unrelenting evil cloaked in the mesmerizing rituals of the Afro-Cuban religions santería and palo mayombé, which summon ancient spiritual powers to the service of its modern-day practitioners.
Morell becomes entrapped in the maw of the occult when he promises an old friend of his recently deceased mother that he will march for her missing godson. Morell soon discovers that the godson, Ricardo Díaz, is a priest of palo mayombé who heads a black-magic cult that conducts gruesome ceremonies of torture and human sacrifice. Galvanized by the unspeakable depravities of Díaz and his followers, and by the horrific murder of a close friend, a good-hearted priest of santería, Morell sets out after his quarry.
But Díaz proves to be more elusive and diabolical than anyone imagines, and Morell's pursuit takes him from the mansions and cemeteries of Miami to the scorched hinterlands of Baja California and the seamy barrios of Los Angeles. As he cleaves to the killer's trail, Morell realizes he is both hunter and hunted, tracker and prey. In a precipitous and unexpected ending, with the lives of those he loves the most hanging in the balance, he sees that salvation will be found only in his own tortured past.
