[Martin Cruz Smith] has a rare capacity to make the flesh crawl. The horrors in "Nightwing" are too vaguely set in motion: a Hopi medicine man, sickened by the intrusion of developers and tourists, resolves to "end the world." Vampire bats begin to rampage. Better the disruption of the natural order were entirely inexplicable, as in Hitchcock's "The Birds." But Smith has a fresh locale, arresting social detail about whites and Indians and a truly sickening ability to portray death in desert country….

Martin Cruz Smith 1942– © Jerry Bauer

The wipe-out of human life in the Western desert is averted, but the possibility seems very real: the bats and fleas have much greater vitality than the human characters. The leathery rustle of wings becomes unnerving; the activity of fleas under a microscope provides one of the book's best scenes. An imperfect thriller, "Nightwing" is a nightmare of natural history...