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Review

‘The Midnight Cafe, An Immersive Paranormal Thriller By J.R. Peter’

The Bottom Line: ‘For fans of Susanna Clark’s Piranesi, The Midnight Cafe reads like an immersive fever dream that fans of magical realism will love.’

Set in the dark underbelly of Trinidad and Tobago, The Midnight Cafe is a place “where the night creatures gather” according to Bishop, a self-appointed champion of marginalized people. Bishop seems to exist somewhere between the land of the living and the dead, and with the clap of his hands, Bishop makes spirits and people appear to do his bidding.  His dialogue reads like a blend of stinging truth, metaphor and riddle, and at times his ambitions and sacrifices seem almost Christ-like.

Enter corrupt police inspector David Randolph, whose granddaughter can only be saved by an expensive operation that he cannot afford. After admonishing Randolph for his wickedness, Bishop agrees to help him by offering him half a million dollars, though he stresses that it’s not a gift. He further points him to the High Priestess in the Midnight Cafe. 

We can’t overstate how vivid author J.R. Peter’s prose is. Each scene is immaculately constructed and his characters’ reactions to the often haunting happenings feels fully believable. At the same time, Peter keeps readers guessing about what is and is not real throughout. This includes, at times, the identity of core characters and whether they are living or dead. At one point, a bewildered character named Cliffie begs a person who comes to him, “Let me see you. Turn on the light.” Readers may feel similarly throughout, but fans of magical realism – for example, anything by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, or Susanna Clark’s runaway hit Piranesi – will relish Peter’s cryptic approach. 

One of the book’s strong suits is its use of freedom as a theme. Just as Randolph wishes to free his granddaughter of the illness that threatens her life, a lot more is at stake for the cast in general: freedom from the law, freedom from societal burdens, and freedom of psychological torment, just to name a few. The effect is subtle, but it adds up to become a powerful driving force by the story’s end.

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US-based editor’s commentary

“Set in Trinidad, the book traces the life of Bishop who is the head of an underground organization called Blue Devils; he exploits the corrupt system for a reason—to help the poor, the wharf dwellers. The organization capitalizes on the corruption rampant in the government to provide monetary support and social justice to the poor. In the background of unorthodox dealings, the underlying thread running through the book is that which highlights the importance of relationships and loyalty. This forms the basis of the book, as Bishop racked with grief and guilt for his dead son tries to help other fathers, Dwarfie and Cliffie, reunite with their sons.It was an excellent read that kept the pages turning. The use of the accents is commendable.”

Author’s note. The story behind the story

The events unfold on Kings’ Wharf, San Fernando, and puts a human face to unsavory characters—druggies, drug dealers, prostitutes, assassins, and thieves and their covert link to so-called respectable members of civil society—priests, police, business leaders, newspaper editors, and politicians—whose greed and perversions  lead them to this alluring underground world.

The idea for the novel was conceived a year and a half before the onset of the Coronavirus and was motivated in part by news stories about crime, social injustice, prejudice, and the dire impact of government corruption on the lower class. The characters evolved from an observation of real people and actual situations.

I didn’t write about the forbidden underworld based on an abstract insight. I garnered firsthand knowledge by mingling with “unsavory characters” in their stomping grounds—the desolate promenade, the gloomy wharf, and seedy rum shops. Don’t be fooled. The realm of the social outcasts is not without ethics and morality of its own. It shares a common principle with civil society: Treat people with respect and you gain theirs.

The people I’ve met are hardly the prototypical unconscionable thugs they are made out to be. Surviving against an unjust and inequitable system that prejudges and relegates them to the edge of society has emboldened them with a street-sense logic akin to brutal commonsense—one that draws from the harsh realities of life. Their viewpoints on politics were jaw-droppingly fascinating and you immediately grasp the reason for the unemotional, nonpartisan stance.  People who exist on the periphery of society are the first to be impacted by the government’s socioeconomic decisions directly and immediately.

Figuratively speaking, the esoteric world that exists on the edge of society, is akin to a negative film and civil society, the positive print. Corruption, prejudice, injustice, etc. conspire to create that world, and the complicity of the church cannot be ignored. The pillars of the church are as strong as it is weak because ‘the flesh is weak.’

A venerable local grammar expert once told me: one doesn’t write a novel and not learn a thing or two about himself. The characters in The Midnight Café—tortured souls and victims of circumstance—have awakened old insecurities and latent emotions and reliving human suffering and animal cruelty in the course of writing the novel can suck your soul out. Living in a community, and by extension, a society of callous and self-righteous people with no compassion for animals shines a lurid light on the darkness of the human spirit. Human compassion and human decency exist on the same plane. One cannot thrive without the other.

I would like to think that the novel would ultimately provoke the question: “Is civil society a victim of the underworld or is the underworld a spawn of the civil society?” In a way, it’s about settling a societal score: poor people’s morality vs. the deceit of civil society.

More about the author

The author is a hobbyist writer and artist from Trinidad and Tobago. A few of his ‘primitive-styled’ representational paintings made it to joint showings—The Art Society summer exhibition, American Women’s charity auction, and other minor events. He also dabbles in abstract/contemporary paintings and wire sculptures. As a writer/novelist, some of his features have appeared in local newspapers and his self-published novels have earned positive editorial reviews from internationally acclaimed review agencies. The professionally edited version of his first full-length novel Carnival Queen managed to attain a rare BlueStar for excellence from Blue Ink reviews. As a special bonus, the book was displayed on BlueInk’s landing web page for a month and was briefly considered to be made into a film by Meredith Vieira Productions.

“After searching through my life’s clutter,” says the author, “I unearthed a cherished handwritten note from Undine Giuseppe: ‘I look forward to reading your second novel. Barring the weaknesses, you have a flair for language, so you can do it.’ Sadly, she passed away before my second novel A Pyre of Roses was released. It earned an IR sticker for excellence and four 4+ editorial reviews from internationally acclaimed review agencies and an interview with IndieReader online magazine.

Those attuned to the publishing industry would know that these achievements are hollow by comparison. Real success lies in an author’s ability to land a book deal from a traditional publisher. A near-impossible feat for a hobbyist author in an intensely saturated industry.

However, one does not explore their creative potential for money or any kind of remuneration. That’s foolhardy and sacrilegious. Self-gratification is perhaps the only benefit that can be derived from art and fiction writing in Trinidad and Tobago. Publishing is expensive, and based on statistics, just five percent of self-published novels earn over five hundred dollars (US). With limited resources and the high forex exchange rate, you seek out the most affordable editorial service, cross your finger, and hope for the best. Of course, there are good style and grammar experts in the country, but (international) book industry experts provide valuable suggestions to polish-up up a novel.

Given these grim challenges, I can’t honestly say what possessed me to write and publish The Midnight Café. After my second full-length novel, which was poorly marketed due to a lack of funds, I swore to never again write another. I suppose it was done to satisfy a silly creative craving though I can’t dismiss the boredom Covid19 restrictions had imposed. At the start of the lock down, I wrote the last paragraph, and weeks later, the opening lines, and over the ensuing four months I surprised myself and filled in 130,000 words.

Most of what I’ve gleaned about writing novels comes from working with (book publishing) editors and from resources on the internet, even though I find it tedious to stick to academic norms. For me, a novel exits in the mind like a movie on a cinema screen before it becomes actual words.

As far as creativity is concerned, I feel comfortable in the realm of mavericks and bohemians. I steer clear of the (local) mainstream art world which to my mind is tarnished by politics, nepotism, societal prejudice, and elitism. You see the evidence in the bias and perverse art reviews in some newspapers—that evaluate the creators of the art rather than the art itself and with mortifying ad-libs characteristic of certain commentators/journalists.

I don’t lay claim to expert writing skills, but I were to offer a suggestion to fledgling novelists it would be: fictionalize yourself and enter the world you created. Oddly, the characters I imagined are the ones who wrote the story.

The real reason I clambered out of retirement to write and paint is to contribute what little I can to animal rights. If one were to take anything away from my reignited creative pursuits, let it be: Be kind to animals.

Due to the inherent high cost in printing and shipping books, The Midnight Café  is only available in eBook format from Amazon.com. For more info and free giveaways, you can ‘like’ the Facebook page Midnight Café.

Be kind to animals.

Kirkus Review

A mysterious Trinidadian secret society helps those on the fringes of society in Peter’s paranormal thriller.

A midnight funeral ceremony offers readers entry into the shadowy underworld of the Blue Devils, a cultish group led by a man known as Bishop, who describes it as an organization that “simply uses or, rather, capitalizes on corruption to help the poor” in the area. It also provides a haven for outcasts: “They are made to feel like royalty,” a woman named Priestess explains at one point. “In our world, we are all royalty. It’s a camaraderie that’s stronger than any bond.” The funeral proceedings are interrupted by police inspector David Randolph, who’s new to western Trinidad but whose reputation for greed and corruption precede him. Bishop is also aware that the inspector’s granddaughter is gravely ill and needs an expensive operation that, even with his ill-gotten gains, Randolph can’t possibly afford. So Bishop, seeing Randolph as potentially useful, makes him an offer of $500,000; “It’s not a gift,” Bishop tells him. “It’s for our mutual benefit.” Peter’s debut sets up an intriguing conflict between Bishop, who has supernatural abilities, and Randolph that has the potential for cat-and-mouse drama but then unaccountably cuts if off in the early going. What remains is, as one character describes, “a long winding story” that’s sporadically compelling but has a tendency toward digression. Bishop is a formidable, if improbable, character with a tortured background on the streets, and Deodath Ramsingh is revealed as a corrupt defense lawyer with whom Bishop has been in a near-lifelong adversarial, although mutually beneficial, relationship. Along the way, the story shows how Bishop juggles relationships with the Syrian Mafia and other outfits whose executives are involved in nefarious financial schemes. “I don’t have to explain anything to you,” Bishop tells one character, but a clearer, cleaner narrative would have gone a long way toward making the narrative easier to follow. That said, the author does effectively detail palpably spooky scenes inside the Blue Devils, particularly in the novel’s early going.

A work that casts a fitfully eerie spell despite an often meandering narrative.