52Books: Sleepless by Charlie Huston
Read this book. Get a copy of Charlie Huston’s Sleepless and just read it.
I don’t have a long history with Charlie Huston. Before six month ago, I didn’t even know he was a writer. Had I still been an avid $200 a month comic junkie, I’m sure I would have come across the name well before now. But those days are gone.
How I discovered him isn’t important. I just know what I like. I like Charlie Huston. The man’s name even has a swagger that elicits thoughts of his preferred genre, Crime. Almost as if he’s a man in the know.
Read this book.
Sleepless is set in the now, a world so much like our own, I fear Huston might have a thumb on our future. Alter the timelines and choices made ever so slightly, I can believe the present as depicted in Sleepless, as lived by rookie LAPD officer Parker Haas.
In Parker’s world, one in ten are dying from prion based disease called Sleepless (SLP). Similar to Fatal Familial Insomnia (FFI), SLP prevents the infected from restorative REM sleep and the disease is 100% fatal. No cure exists, but there is a limited and government regulated drug called Dreamer that alleviates the symptoms reducing the suffering as SLP progresses to it’s final conclusion.
Parker, aside from being a rookie cop, is also a young husband and father, who’s wife suffers with SLP and suspects his daughter might as well. It is Parker’s job to work undercover as a drug dealer and ferret out a potential Dreamer black market. Because Parker is dedicated to the ideals of his job, when he finds a tangible link to what appears to be a gang slaying and is told to back down, proceeds with diligence regardless of the consequences.
Read the book.
Sleepless is told from multiple POV using Parker’s perspective told in first (a journal) and third person, as well as that of an aging hitman, Jasper, who becomes intertwined with Parker’s story.
This stand out novel by Charlie Huston is an engaging police procedural within a terrifying plausible science-fiction wrapper.
If you haven’t already made plans, go get the book and read it.
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I’ve fallen behind my book a week target, so sometime this month I’ll double up a week with my 52 Reviews.
Currently reading Horns by Joe Hill. After that will either be Jonathan Maberry’s Dragon Factory or another Charlie Huston, The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death.
Learn more about Charlie Huston at his website: http://www.pulpnoir.com
In progress …
Rounded out my site today by adding content to my projects page. For now it lists books I’m working on in one fashion or another, ordered by importance. For now TERMINAL is still my main focus through Winter/Spring, as things move forward I’ll add posts and progress reports on the page so you can have a one stop link to know how the writing is going.
Goal is to work through these in the next 24-36 months. Some day the horse will catch up to the cart, I promise.
Where have all the poems gone?
Last summer I posted a series of poems I produced between 1987-1997 (or there abouts) and tagged them as “Throwback Thursday.” As I shifted my site around, there really wasn’t any home for these poems, so I’ve finally put together a page listing them.
According to stats many still get quite a bit of traffic, so that’s pretty cool. I wanted new people to get a chance to read them, so take the poetry link at the top of my site or just click below:
Hope you enjoy. Maybe I’ll get back in the mood and write a poem or two again.