The Breath of Night

While working as a missionary priest in the Philippines during the Marcos dictatorship, Julian Tremayne championed the Communist rebels and found himself imprisoned for murder. Now, three decades later, following Julian's death, a cult develops around him, even calling for sainthood. When Philip Seward goes to investigate on behalf of Julian's family, he is drawn into a labyrinth of vice, violence, and corruption where nothing and nobody are what they seem. Enriched by a gallery of engaging characters ranging from priests to prostitutes, GIs to gangsters, and street children to Imelda Marcos, this outstanding novel is at once a gripping psychological thriller, a challenging moral mystery, and an unforgettable voyage into a dark and exotic landscape. "Arditti tackles issues of faith, class, and corruption, and the relationship between fact and remembered personal experience, in this beautiful double portrait of the Philippines during the Marcos regime and its aftermath. . . A complex morality tale that in lesser hands could have become a simple foreign adventure."--Publishers Weekly***, Sept. 29, 2014 "Polished language, an effective buildup, and the meditation on the meaning of belief that's thoughtful rather than overbearing."--Library Journal, Nov. 1, 2014