In âNight Life of the Godsâ, we meet Hunter Hawk, wealthy eccentric scientist in 1920s America, who, after numerous explosions, manages to invent an âatomic rayâ that turns living beings into statues, and a second ray that restores them to their original state. With the help of Megaera, a fetching nine-hundred-year-old lady leprechaun he meets one night in the woods, he masters the art of transforming statues into people. Together, the two are invincible, especially when they get to New York City, where there are museums full of statues of Greek and Roman gods and goddesses, waiting to come back to life... Author Thorne Smith puts his seemingly boundless imagination to good work in âThe Night Life of the Godsâ, a rip-roaring novel that postulates about what would happen if ancient deities were revived and allowed to run wild in the streets of Depression-era New York City.