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Charlie Morell #2
Dead of Night
Dead of Night 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 santeria and palo mayombe, 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 search for her missing godson. Morell soon discovers that the godson, Ricardo Diaz, is a priest of palo mayombe who heads a black-magic cult that conducts gruesome ceremonies of torture and human sacrifice. Galvanized by the unspeakable depravities of Diaz and his followers, and by the horrific murder of a close friend, a good-hearted priest of santeria, Morell sets out after his quarry. But Diaz 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.
304 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 1998
1 person is currently reading
68 people want to read
About the author
Alex Abella
23 books23 followersPapá was a poet. I am not.
But I am a writer--journalist, novelist, playwright, screenwriter, news writer. I've tried practically everything that can be done with words upon a page, screen, or any medium, in all genres except poetry.
So far.
The first time I ever wrote anything for publication--or so I thought--I was eight years old. Like many boys who want to be writers, I wrote an adventure story, about knights in armor, if I recall correctly. I thought someone somewhere would publish it but, alas, I had no agent so...
But seriously...the next time I pursued my writing obsession was during high school in New York, when I was determined to break into The New Yorker. I sent the magazine a host of stories--none of which, mercifully, were published, or survived.
Finally, success! I began writing film reviews for my school newspaper, The Columbia Spectator, then, after graduation, became a writer for a small publication in New York.
Moving to California, I joined The San Francisco Chronicle, but was fired the day after I wrote practically the entire front page. You need more ground strokes, said my editor.
So I went to play for the electronic bullpen, becoming a reporter/news writer/producer at KTVU-TV in the San Francisco Bay Area. While there I won an Emmy (group) for newswriting, was nominated for another Emmy for reporting, worked as a foreign correspondent in Central America, wrote a cookbook on bananas, drank too much, partied too much and was thoroughly miserable.
I realized if I stayed a journalist I'd either burn out or commit suicide by age 50. So I quit the daily grind and moved to Hollywood. Since I speak fluent Spanish (I was born in Cuba, remember?) I became a court interpreter in Los Angeles and in the process founded a labor union for interpreters.
Based on my experiences in Los Angeles Superior Court, I wrote a thriller, "The Killing of the Saints," which, to my surprise, became a New York Times Notable Book. I did the movie adaptation for Paramount, then wrote something totally different, "The Great American," a historical novel based on the true story of William Morgan, an Ohio-born American who became one of the leaders of the Cuban Revolution of 1959.
I wrote two follow-ups to Saints, "Dead of Night," and 'Final Acts," then, shaken up by the tragedy of 9/11, I returned to journalism. My research on terrorism led me to co-write "Shadow Enemies: Hitler's Secret Terrorist Plot against the United States," about a band of saboteurs Germany sent by U-boat to the U.S. in 1941.
Then, wanting to explore how the U.S. had become Imperial Rome, I wrote "Soldiers of Reason: The Rand Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire," a study of the world's most influential think tank, which laid the intellectual foundation for the modern world we live in.
I wrote two novels in between: "More Than A Woman," a romance set in California's wine country, and "Shanghai," a hardboiled detective story set in Havana in the dangerous interval between the death of a tyranny and the birth of another.
My latest book is "Mission Churchill," a historical thriller set in 1930s Cuba and in London during the Blitz, featuring a revenge driven IRA assassin determined to terminate the Prime Minister, and have Hitler win the war.
Oh, and since I do have a life, in between books and jobs and sundry obsessions, I married a lovely (and very patient) woman, Armeen, whom I met at KTVU. We have three great kids. For now I split my time between lovely Solana Beach and the new Athens of the Western World, Los Angeles.
That's all for me. I hope to hear from you soon.
Take care.
Alex
But I am a writer--journalist, novelist, playwright, screenwriter, news writer. I've tried practically everything that can be done with words upon a page, screen, or any medium, in all genres except poetry.
So far.
The first time I ever wrote anything for publication--or so I thought--I was eight years old. Like many boys who want to be writers, I wrote an adventure story, about knights in armor, if I recall correctly. I thought someone somewhere would publish it but, alas, I had no agent so...
But seriously...the next time I pursued my writing obsession was during high school in New York, when I was determined to break into The New Yorker. I sent the magazine a host of stories--none of which, mercifully, were published, or survived.
Finally, success! I began writing film reviews for my school newspaper, The Columbia Spectator, then, after graduation, became a writer for a small publication in New York.
Moving to California, I joined The San Francisco Chronicle, but was fired the day after I wrote practically the entire front page. You need more ground strokes, said my editor.
So I went to play for the electronic bullpen, becoming a reporter/news writer/producer at KTVU-TV in the San Francisco Bay Area. While there I won an Emmy (group) for newswriting, was nominated for another Emmy for reporting, worked as a foreign correspondent in Central America, wrote a cookbook on bananas, drank too much, partied too much and was thoroughly miserable.
I realized if I stayed a journalist I'd either burn out or commit suicide by age 50. So I quit the daily grind and moved to Hollywood. Since I speak fluent Spanish (I was born in Cuba, remember?) I became a court interpreter in Los Angeles and in the process founded a labor union for interpreters.
Based on my experiences in Los Angeles Superior Court, I wrote a thriller, "The Killing of the Saints," which, to my surprise, became a New York Times Notable Book. I did the movie adaptation for Paramount, then wrote something totally different, "The Great American," a historical novel based on the true story of William Morgan, an Ohio-born American who became one of the leaders of the Cuban Revolution of 1959.
I wrote two follow-ups to Saints, "Dead of Night," and 'Final Acts," then, shaken up by the tragedy of 9/11, I returned to journalism. My research on terrorism led me to co-write "Shadow Enemies: Hitler's Secret Terrorist Plot against the United States," about a band of saboteurs Germany sent by U-boat to the U.S. in 1941.
Then, wanting to explore how the U.S. had become Imperial Rome, I wrote "Soldiers of Reason: The Rand Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire," a study of the world's most influential think tank, which laid the intellectual foundation for the modern world we live in.
I wrote two novels in between: "More Than A Woman," a romance set in California's wine country, and "Shanghai," a hardboiled detective story set in Havana in the dangerous interval between the death of a tyranny and the birth of another.
My latest book is "Mission Churchill," a historical thriller set in 1930s Cuba and in London during the Blitz, featuring a revenge driven IRA assassin determined to terminate the Prime Minister, and have Hitler win the war.
Oh, and since I do have a life, in between books and jobs and sundry obsessions, I married a lovely (and very patient) woman, Armeen, whom I met at KTVU. We have three great kids. For now I split my time between lovely Solana Beach and the new Athens of the Western World, Los Angeles.
That's all for me. I hope to hear from you soon.
Take care.
Alex
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April 23, 2011
This book was quite a surprise. I bought it several years ago on clearance for .49. With the purchase price of forty-nine cents I was expecting at the most an "average" book. I really enjoyed this story. It's very different than most of the books I read, yet it was very well written.
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