Sleepless
Charlie Huston
Ballantine, Jan 12 2010, $25.00
ISBN: 9780345501134
In 2010 in Los Angeles, a devastating affliction leaves its victim with chronic insomnia. Those who catch SLP never fall asleep and over the next few months the body not healing withers away until the incoherent person finally blessedly dies. Meanwhile the pandemic spreads in a city already under lawless siege as even the baseball season is cancelled.
Violence is out of control as LAPD cop Parker “Park” Haas fears for the future life of his newborn daughter especially with her mother dying, his beloved spouse dying from SLP. Meanwhile Park investigates Chasm Tide, an online game that people have turned to in order to run from reality and a black market drug Dreamer that provides relief to the misfortunate. However, as Park fears he may have caught the disease and his child too, he begins to connect dots that frighten him more than SLP.
Sleepless in Los Angeles is a terrific post-apocalyptic crime thriller starring a reluctant Noir hero who knows he is in too deep but has no idea how to get out if he is to try to save his wife and child as he keeps reminding himself he is just a cop. Somewhat different in tone and subject than Charlie Huston’s Joe Pitt saga it also shares an underlying sameness of love thrives even inside a hellhole. Park is a superb individual as all he wants is to take care of his family, but circumstances forces him in the role of a hero who thinks he be Don Quixote losing to that windmill that has some of powerful people propelling it.
Harriet Klausner
No comments:
Post a Comment