SleepyHead
What woman doesn't want to be known for just her mind? Most women would bend over backwards to find a man who could appreciate what she was thinking, not what she was wearing or how full her bra was. Being waited on hand and foot doesn't seem like such a bad idea either does it? People to feed you when you are hungry, bathe you and adjust your bed when the pillows need fluffing? Sounds like the life, doesn't it? You can have all of this and more.
All you need is a night out, in England, with a creepy sorta guy. Surprise! The next thing you know, you are laying in bed suffering from a stroke which leads to a condition called "locked in syndrome". Poor, poor Allison. She was the one who made it. She was the one who lived. Allison could have died from the stroke induced on her, but instead she is trapped in her body not able to move, talk, or breathe on her own at first.
Thorne, a local detective comes in thinking he has a serial killer to catch, only to learn early on that he has a serial wacko on his hands. This guy is not out to kill his victims. He simply wants to put them into a stasis, where the only thing that is able to be used by the women are their brains. Everything in their lives are provided for, the criminal thinks he is doing these women a favor. The women have people to wait on them hand and foot, they will never have to lift a finger again, besides, they couldn't even if they wanted to…
Thorne is a typical novel detective. The funny thing is that, in the novel, he seems to point out how he seems to ooze out the stereotypes of the typical detective. I find it amusing that the author points out Thorne's un-uniqueness in the story. Every time our typical detective gets close to honing in on the perpetrator, something seems to slip through the cracks, and Thorne is left standing holding his own…notebook. The back and forth game goes on and on until finally the stakes are raised. Thorne has about thrown in the towel. The games are tearing him apart mentally. Now is not the time to give up, there are many lives on the line now and Thorne is the one who needs to finish the ordeal. Blood will be spilled, but whose and how much is the final question.
Creepy is all over this book. The mental processes needed by the antagonist to do to these women what he does is just insane. Trapping someone in their own mind is horrifying! We get to hear a bit from Allison in the book, these passages, to me are the most interesting parts of the book. For a girl in an almost coma, the girl's got a sense of humor! It seems that Billingham really enjoyed himself the most when he was writing from her point of view. These parts seemed too short in my opinion.
There were several parts of the book that seemed to drag on that I couldn't figure out why he had put them in the book. I know background is always important to have, but sometimes too much background is tedious. Some of Thorne's information could have been omitted or maybe condensed. The one thing I was definitely glad to see not drawn out was the gore in the book. Yes, there are killings. Yes, there is death. Yes, there are MULTIPLE deaths. We understand what happens in messy killings, and we were given plenty of details, but it wasn't anything I was going to be throwing my lunch up over. For a debut book, it showed a great sense of maturity as a writer. The imagination can fill in a great deal with the right lead from the author, and Billingham filled that role perfectly.
Get out some fish and chips and go on a serial whacko chasing adventure with Thorne. Your dentist won't hate you just for imagining you are in England.
Review by Amy Eye
