| Pub Date: | September 26, 1977 |
| Publisher: | W. W. Norton |
| Author: | Martin Cruz Smith |
| Genre: | Thriller |
Nightwing is a 1977 thriller novel by American author Martin Cruz Smith,[1] [2] who adapted it for a 1979 film with the same title directed by Arthur Hiller.
A disgruntled, disenfranchised Hopi shaman sets out to "end the world" by way of a ritual invocation of the Hopi god of death. Shortly after his mutilated corpse is discovered by a skeptical Tewa deputy the body count begins to rise as more strangely slashed and bloodied victims are found.
The book has many elements: part love triangle; part Native American case study; part supernatural thriller. It was the author's own tribal ancestry which inspired the writing of this fictionalized anthropological mini-survey.