The Little Sleep - Softcover

Tremblay, Paul

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0805088490 ISBN 13: 9780805088496

Publisher: Holt Paperbacks, 2009

Synopsis

The wickedly entertaining debut featuring Mark Genevich, Narcoleptic Detective

Mark Genevich is a South Boston P.I. with a little problem: he's narcoleptic, and he suffers from the most severe symptoms, including hypnagogic hallucinations. These waking dreams wreak havoc for a guy who depends on real-life clues to make his living.

Clients haven't exactly been beating down the door when Mark meets Jennifer Times―daughter of the powerful local D.A. and a contestant on American Star―who walks into his office with an outlandish story about a man who stole her fingers. He awakes from his latest hallucination alone, but on his desk is a manila envelope containing risqué photos of Jennifer. Are the pictures real, and if so, is Mark hunting a blackmailer, or worse?

Wildly imaginative and with a pitch-perfect voice, Paul Tremblay's The Little Sleep is the first in a new series that casts a fresh eye on the rigors of detective work, and introduces a character who has a lot to prove―if only he can stay awake long enough to do it.

About this title

About the Author

Paul Tremblay is the author of No Sleep Till Wonderland and The Little Sleep. He has won acclaim for his short fiction and received two nominations for the 2007 Bram Stoker Award, and he lives in Massachusetts with his wife and two children.

Reviews

South Boston PI Mark Genevich struggles to lead a seminormal life despite his narcolepsy, whose symptoms include falling asleep mid-conversation and hallucinations, in this uninspired noir from Stoker-finalist Tremblay (City Pier). When Jennifer Times, the daughter of prominent DA William "Billy" Times, comes to Mark's office with racy photographs of herself she received anonymously, Mark agrees to take her case. But after trying to contact both Jennifer—who's a contestant on an American Idol–like TV show—and her father, Mark realizes that Jennifer's visit was a hallucination. The photographs are his only tether to reality, one that becomes even more tenuous when he discovers not only that the subject isn't Jennifer, but that her father and his goons will do anything to get the mysterious photos back. Despite a promisingly quirky hero, Tremblay's plot is so full of holes that readers may wonder if they've suffered from one of Mark's frequent blackouts. (Mar.)
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As if the severe narcolepsy he developed after an auto accident hasn’t been enough of a stumbling block for Mark Genevich, the wisecracking South Boston PI now seems to have drawn the ire of the district attorney and his dour goons. He can’t be sure because his condition also triggers harrowing hallucinations, such as the woman who seems to show up at his office begging him to help find her stolen fingers. Hallucination or not, she looked a lot like the DA’s daughter, a finalist in an American Idol–style singing contest, and didn’t the DA grow up with Genevich’s late father in Southie? With the help of his acerbic-but-doting mom, Genevich stirs himself from his usual computer-based investigations and sets out into the hostile real world to solve the case—or at least figure out if a case even exists. Although the plot of this Chandler homage grows ragged around its increasingly surreal edges, it’s hard not to root for the loopy Genevich. (“I’m not peachy,” he explains at one point. “I’m not feeling any fruit in particular.”) This is a promising debut. --Frank Sennett

Edition details

• Publisher: Holt Paperbacks
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0805088490
• ISBN 13: 9780805088496
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 271