Synopsis
In the sleep room, the patients were dreaming. I passed between the beds, registering the rapid-eye movements. Marian Powell's lips were opening and closing.
I leaned closer and turned my ear towards her mouth. All that I could hear as first was a kind of inflected breathing, but gradually consonants were introduced and words became intelligible:
"Wake up... wake up."
When promising psychiatrist, James Richardson, is offered the job opportunity of a lifetime, he is thrilled. Setting off to take up his post at Wyldehope Hall in deepest Suffolk, Richardson doesn’t look back. One of his tasks is to manage a controversial project – a pioneering therapy in which extremely disturbed patients are kept asleep for months. As Richardson settles into his new life, he begins to sense something uncanny about the sleeping patients – six women, forsaken by society. Why is the trainee nurse so on edge when she spends nights alone with them? And what can it mean when all the sleepers start dreaming at the same time? It's not long before Richardson finds himself questioning everything he knows about the human mind as he attempts to uncover the shocking secrets of The Sleep Room . . .
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About the Author
F. R. Tallis is a writer and clinical psychologist. Between 1999 and 2012, he received or was nominated for numerous awards, including the New London Writers’ Award, the Ellis Peters Historical Dagger, the Elle Prix de Letrice, the Crime Writers’ Association Historical Dagger Award, and two Edgar Allan Poe Awards. He is the author of The Sleep Room, The Forbidden, The Voices, and The Passenger, all available from Pegasus Crime. He lives in London.
From Booklist
For psychiatrist James Richardson, working for the renowned Dr. Hugh Maitland at Wyldehope Hall in Suffolk in the 1950s is a rare professional opportunity that is bound to enhance his future prospects. But his sense of foreboding begins to grow in the remote setting, particularly surrounding the sleep room, Maitland’s controversial project in which six severely mentally ill women are treated by being kept asleep for months on end. As Richardson adjusts to his duties and establishes a romantic relationship with nurse Jane Turner, unexplained events, seemingly caused by a poltergeist, puzzle him and frighten a staff member and male patient, with disastrous consequences. At the same time, he observes that the dreams of the sleeping women are becoming synchronized, a situation that ultimately leads to tragedy. Clinical-psychologist Tallis, author of the Max Liebermann mysteries set in Freud’s Vienna (written under the name of Frank Tallis), explores the mysteries of the human mind and the nature of reality so skillfully that his final twist can be easily accepted in this novel of psychological suspense that’s firmly grounded in fact. --Michele Leber
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