Dance of the mongoose

the long version

Joe Wilder is a not-too-successful writer who lives in New York's Greenwich Village. He's just turned thirty, his latest play has just flopped off-Broadway, and his on-again, off-again girlfriend has just phoned with the wonderful news that she's getting married. And it's two days before Christmas... Then the letter arrives - an urgent plea for Joe to return to his hometown of St. Thomas. His oldest friend, Frank Jensen, is suspected of murdering his own father, a judge with political ambitions. When Joe Wilder goes back to the island of his youth, his unofficial investigation uncovers a web of true evil - in the lives of the people he had always presumed innocent. Then Joe remembers the old West Indies legend of the mongoose, possessed by the mystical power to drive away evil: It is said when the mongooses killed the last snake on the island of St. Thomas, they danced in victory by the light of the moon.