Dance of the Mongoose — Tom Savage

“I've been trying to imagine the murder scene. It probably went something like this...”

So begins the chronicle of Joseph Wilder, a struggling New York City writer whose approach to criminal evil is strictly literary -- until a trip to his hometown in the Virgin Islands becomes his first case as a detective.

When he receives an urgent message asking him to return to St. Thomas, Joe goes home immediately. His oldest friend's father, a judge with political ambitions, has been brutally murdered, and his friend is suspected of the crime. Back among family and childhood acquaintances, Joe soon learns that everyone he knows had reasons for wanting the judge dead, and someone he knows has made it happen. When he tries to untangle the web of secrets and lies surrounding the case, he remembers the old West Indies legend of the mongoose, possessed by the power to drive away evil: It is said that when the mongooses killed the last snake on the island of St. Thomas, they danced in victory by the light of the moon…

Joe Wilder may not have the same mystical power, but he's determined to find the snakes in this case and drive them out -- even if victory means putting his own life in danger.

Originally published in 1995, Dance of the Mongoose is the first Joe Wilder mystery by bestselling author Tom Savage (Valentine, A Penny for the Hangman) under the pseudonym “T. J. Phillips.” It was followed in 1997 by Woman in the Dark, which is also now available as an ebook.