Jimmy Paz returns for a final adventure in the highly anticipated sequel to "Tropic of Night" and "Valley of Bones. The acclaimed author Michael Gruber's most accessible and also most provocative work to date, "Jaguar" completes the "Paz" trilogy as only the author dubbed "the Stephen King of crime writing" ("The Denver Post") could. A shaman from the South America arrives in Miami, determined to prevent the despoiling of his tribe's native land. When Cuban businessmen begin dying in gruesome fashion, seemingly eaten alive by a massive jungle cat, Jimmy Paz, Miami's expert criminal investigator into the deeply weird, is called back from retirement to find the killer. But Paz has problems of his own: he and his daughter Amelia's nights are both haunted by dreams of a jaguar who has come to take her as a sacrifice ...
I was born and raised in New York City, and educated in its public schools. I went to Columbia, earning a BA in English literature.. After college I did editorial work at various small magazines in New York, and then went back to school at City College and got the equivalent of a second BA, in biology. After that I went to the University of Miami and got a masters in marine biology. In 1968-69 I was in the U. S. Army as a medic.
In 1973, I received my Ph.D. in marine sciences, for a study of octopus behavior. Then I was a chef at several Miami restaurants. Then I was a hippie traveling around in a bus and working as a roadie for various rock groups. Then I worked for the county manager of Metropolitan Dade County, as an analyst. Then I was director of planning for the county department of human resources.
I went to Washington DC in 1977, and worked in the Carter White House, Office of Science and Technology Policy. Then I worked in the Environmental Protection Agency as a policy analyst and also as the speechwriter for the Administrator. In 1986, I was promoted to the Senior Executive Service of the U.S., the highest level of the federal civil service. That same year, Robert K. Tanenbaum contacted me and asked me to write a courtroom thriller to be published under his name. I did that, and since then I have also written the first fifteen novels in the popular Butch Karp and Marlene series.
In 1988 I left Washington, D.C. and settled in Seattle, where I worked as a speechwriter and environmental expert for the state land commissioner. I have been a full-time freelance writer since 1990, mostly on the Karp novels, but also doing non-fiction magazine pieces on biology. My first novel under my own name, TROPIC OF NIGHT, was published in 2003 (William Morrow) and a second novel, VALLEY OF BONES, as well as a children's book THE WITCH'S BOY (Harper Collins) came out in 2005. A third thriller for Morrow, NIGHT OF THE JAGUAR is due out in early 2006. I am married, with three grown children and an extremely large dog.
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