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Biblioholic Review: The Shadow Men

4 Aug

Enjoying The Chamber of Ten, we were eager to get a chance to read the newest effort from the writing team of Christopher Golden and Tim Lebbon, The Shadow Men. And the fact the work, part of the Hidden Cities series, is set entirely in Boston our interest was doubly piqued.

And The Shadow Men is a little bit of a occult love letter and travelogue to the city known as the Hub of the Universe, sure to please locals or lovers of this great city.

The Shadow Men is our Boston, the place of pubs, eateries, trendy boutiques and copious amounts of history. Yes, the history of Boston, America’s first metropolis, runs through our veins and in The Shadow Men it takes on mythic qualities. This supernatural pulse that courses along the Freedom Trail, through Copp’s Hill Burial Ground and under the cobblestone wetted by the blood of patriots create the perfect creative caldron for The Shadow Men.

Boston as spine for this supernatural story is its best attribute.

The Shadow Men is about artist Jim Banks who is awakened by strange images of Bostons surreal and unknown. Of course he commits them to canvas in an effort to understand this strange inspiration. Hours after his latest nightmare painting he suddenly realizes his beloved wife, Jenny, and daughter Holly have vanished. Not from Boston, but apparently their world.

Questioning his mental stability, Jim seeks aid from Jenny’s long time friend, Trixie Newcomb. The two recognize each other. Everyone else in Jim’s sphere, that had a connection to Jenny, is no longer part of his reality. His friends are different, they question what is wrong with Jim. He was never married and never had a child.

Jim and Trixie struggle to come to grips with this world without their Jenny and Holly, until Trixie pulls on a long forgotten mystical asset- The Oracle of Boston. From there we are plunged into a world of splintered realities, black magic, Wraiths, shadow realms and provincialism gone extreme.

We’ll yank the reigns on the details there because from this point on it’ll get spoilerific.

Now, we have two main characters, each pursuing the same goal- rescuing Jenny and Holly. Each wanting to save Jenny and Holly, but both coming at this rescue with possible different motives.

Jim in a way started out as a sort of artistic weakling who claimed undying love for his wife and daughter, but he demonstrated less than heroic efforts for a bulk of the novel. More like a lost puppy than charge through plate glass hero. Yet through each harrowing brush with death and strange occurrence, Jim seems to find that backbone and unyielding need to save his wife and daughter. In the end, he becomes a minor action hero with a brush and pallet instead of pistol and rapier.

Trixie, however, we did not take so kindly to. She was so overbearing a character, her desire to see Jenny saved seemed more than a little selfish. You see Trixie loved Jenny, like REALLY loved Jenny. She wanted Jenny to be hers and doubted if she truly left that desire behind.

Sure there was a bond forged by adversity between Jim and Trixie, but there was an off-note with the duo and at times it felt beyond compassionate for lost loves, drifting towards selfish.

Our ardor remains for the creative duo of Golden and Lebbon, showing that you can like a story, but you don’t have to love all its characters.

The Shadow Men by Christopher Golden and Tim Lebbon was purchased for review by the Boston Book Bums

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Bibloholic Review: The Witch of Babylon

2 Aug

It’s nice to read a thriller about ancient Near East and not laugh your butt off with historical inaccuracies or cartoonish cultural portrayals. The Witch of Babylon from Canadian D.J. McIntosh, who’s also a member of the Society for Mesopotamia, has some pretty good historical background street cred.

Sadly, The Witch of Babylon didn’t have the juice needed to make it an exceptional thriller.

The Witch of Babylon has all the characteristics of modern thrillers- action, shadowy killers, ancient mysteries and plenty of travel. From New York to war-time Baghdad, The Witch of Babylon covers the map but somehow all the kinetics don’t make it great.

Our lead character, John Madison, is a Turkish-American art dealer is piecing together his life after the death of his brother Samuel. Not too far in, we kick off a mystery of looted antiquities and alchemy, pitted against the blood thirstily greedy and hushed intellectual conversations.

Following a basic template, The Witch of Babylon endeavors to unravel hidden messages in artwork from the likes Albrecht Durer and a cuneiform tablet, the Hebrew Bible and more. It’s been so overdone by the past decade’s thriller crop, this historical jigsaw puzzle formula, that McIntosh’s hard work loses some oompf.

Madison, was an interesting guy but wasn’t anyone you’d remember if you met him at at cocktail party. Also, between all the chemically induced or physical blows he takes through the book, he’d never survive an airplane flight. One too many black outs to break scenes proved a bit annoying.

McIntosh shows off her historical knowledge well throughout the book. We enjoyed those numerous scenes, that some would call info-dumps. We like info-dumps in thrillers, so long as they’re smart and within hand grenade distance of historically accurate. No complaints from us on that front, McIntosh has great grasp on turning historical dissertations into engaging conversation.

The Witch of Babylon needed to be a bit tighter, with sharpened action sequences, while still retaining its nice historical broad-strokes often neglected in modern thrillers.

Part of a pre-planned trilogy, we held high hopes for this book, but unfortunately we don’t think we’ll be returning for another bout. Not a bad book, it’s just not great.

The Witch of Babylon by D.J. McIntosh was purchased for review by the Boston Book Bums

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Biblioholic Review: The Paradise Prophecy

21 Jul

With a name like The Paradise Prophecy you can pretty much belt yourself in and hang on for the literary ride. And surely, The Paradise Prophecy delivers some sweet enjoyment, like amusement park cotton candy. But like the spun sugar sweet, it’s not very filling.

The Paradise Prophecy by Robert Browne is the story of U.S. secret agent Bernadette Callahan, part of a shadow agency known as Section. Callahan is dispatched to Brazil upon the mysterious death of a Christian pop singer. Intertwined into the plot is religious historian Sebastian “Batty” LaLaurie, who becomes Callahan’s Rosetta Stone for all things esoteric and religious.

Important to each movement of The Paradise Prophecy is Milton’s Pardise Lost which Browne utilizes as a potential key to the end of the world. Also the ancient war in heaven that lead to Lucifer’s downfall continues in The Paradise Prophecy, and pits angels versus angels here on Earth today.

Browne reinvents and embellishes some established thriller pastiches in the worlds of  religion, eschatology and angelology. The Paradise Prophecy pushes along quickly, throwing in dashes of action and detail here and there. There is plenty of jetting around, scene and locale changes, but they oddly felt half filled out, more hastily portrayed than immersive and ambiance laden.

The characters are interesting, but not compelling. Batty has flashes of Lovecraftian torment, burdened with secrets and turgid intelligence. Callahan is no-nonsense, a straight forward foot soldier, following the clues and taking no crap.

When one of the main characters reveals a secret tormented history and power, the revelation is so deadpan it is thoroughly anti-climatic. Dropped into the logic pattern of the story, the revelation’s gravitas is lessened by tissue thin resistance by other characters.

And the book’s climax unwinds like a mash-up of Dan Brown and Stan Lee, was just too silly and not ominous enough for a battle to decide the fate of mankind.

The Paradise Prophecy had shortcomings which, unfortunately, it did not overcome.

The Paradise Prophecy by Robert Browne was received for free for review by Boston Book Bums

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Biblioholic Review: The Trinity Six

15 Mar

This Boston Book Bum is not a usual reader of spy thrillers, but after listening to the charming Charles Cumming speak about his latest novel, The Trinity Six back in October, we had to give this book and this genre a shot.  We are so pleased we did.

Charles Cumming may have added a bit of authenticity to the British spy novel, after all, he was once recruited by MI6.  Cumming takes a true life spy story, the Cambridge Five and adds a twist.  The Cambridge Five was a group of five Cambridge College students who became communist during their time at school and were recruited by the Soviet Union to pass British secrets during World War II.  All this is true, as well as the persistent rumor that a sixth spy was part of the ring but never revealed.  Cumming wisely uses this rumor as the foundation for his novel, The Trinity Six by introducing us to the possibility that a sixth spy existed, even though quite old, may still be alive and well in Great Britain.

Enter Sam Gaddis, a unlikely, unsuspecting academic who finds himself investigated just such a rumor.  Gaddis is in some recent financial troubles, nothing scandalous, just recovering from an expensive divorce and meeting the education needs of his daughter.  There is your incentive.  Gaddis is a professor of Russian History and has published a several small books on the subject so when he approaches his publisher for an advance, the publisher advices that he find a blockbuster of a story.  Lucky for Sam, his best friend is a journalist who may have a blockbuster story she is willing to share.  Sam’s luck changes when his best friend, hard drinking, hard smoking middle-aged Charlotte dies of a heart attack.

Cumming manages to navigate the two major pitfalls of most spy thrillers with ease.  First of all, even though there is ubiquitous “meet beautiful woman 15 years younger and bed her the next day” scene, mostly  Cumming steers clear of the damsel in distress theme, and in fact Sam Gaddis is pulled from many a rough spot with the help of some crafty women.

The other pitfall that is generally completely ignored in the thriller genre is why does a seemingly normal guy, with no specific training get involved in such a deadly game of spies.  Cumming addresses this head on with Gaddis weighing his options and trying to figure out how to get untangled and why he chooses not to.

Maybe its Cumming’s own peek into MI6, or the likable, fairly realistic Sam Gaddis or perhaps the provenance of British spies, but The Trinity Six works and is enjoyable from beginning to end.  Of course, one can’t help wonder if now that Sam Gaddis has a taste of the spy world, will he be back for more?

The Trinity Six by Charles Cumming was received for free by Boston Book Bums

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Biblioholic Review: Red Station

16 Dec

Adrian Magson’s Red Station is a throw back thriller. There are no gadgets (real or far fetched) to create or solve problems. No armchair politics that push the scribe’s leanings. No ridiculous fetes of physical skill. Nothing to distract the reader. You are absorbed in a plot firmly rooted in the real world, with a thriller tint.

Red Station is the story of MI-5 operative and former soldier, Harry Tate. The officer of domestic intelligence is put at the head of a drug bust that goes awry right before his eyes. Put on a  fast track to nowhere to avoid public fallout, Tate is shipped off to a British intelligence outpost known as Red Station. The station is on the far-flung edge of 10 Downing Street interest, the Caucuses, more specifically the republic of Georgia.

This outpost, sort of like the spook equivalent of the Island of Misfit Toys, is forgotten and unimportant to British foreign policy. That is until Tate arrives. Shortly after the officer lands in Georgia, the nation rushes towards the real war with Russia over the territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in 2008.

With this real world drama as a backdrop, Tate works his ways through a new mundane and relatively useless way of life, until war clouds start to gather. Suddenly he finds himself useful, as well as a target. From  that point on the thriller kicks into gear and moves with purpose.

British thrillers, especially when geared towards espionage and military-philes, transcend their ham fisted American cousins on several front. British thrillers, like the one crafted by Magson, are about detail in the right dose. They have an authentic workman quality, with expert subtle eye for detail and tradecraft, unlike the often festishized, laboriously gear-centric/tech-hungry or self-congratulatory U.S. thrillers.

And while politics are worn on the sleeve of most domestic thriller scribes, Red Station is about one man, on the ground and the world around him, not about the author pushing his political beliefs through self-righteous, demagogue monologues.

Also Magson has you following Tate’s every move with anticipation, not with lame gimmickry, but from genuine, rock solid plotting, pacing and character. In one scene, where Tate (this being his first book in a series) questions a figure from his past, the two converse in a realistic way about an incident that we never read, but feels like we know.

Magson does an excellent job of giving Georgia those little touches of authenticity, weaving in spies, soldiers and killers with just the right amount of detail, but not bogging down either the country or its inhabitant with over-characterization.

Red Station, hands down, is the best espionage thriller we’ve read in a long time. Mr. Magson, you have some new fans in these Boston Book Bums.

Red Station by Adrian Magson was purchased by the Boston Book Bums

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Biblioholic Review: The Chamber of Ten

4 Aug

The Chamber of Ten is an interesting combination of historical thriller and supernatural horror. Easily, the basic idea could have been plucked from any number of Dan Brown-clones, but the addition of magical elements at the story’s earliest stages create a more substantial and original work.

American archaeologist Geena Hodge works in the slowly sinking city of Venice, racing against time and tides to save the city’s vast untold history. In The Chamber of Ten Hodge’s chore is to reveal the lost library of Renaissance humanist Petrarch. However, when the team of experts led by Hodge probes a subterranean secret vault, a series of surreal moments lead to a greater series of calamities that propel The Chamber of Ten forward.

While Hodge receives top billing, the real star of The Chamber of Ten is her colleague and lover, Nico Lombardi. He is the tragic puppet that makes everything happen in the story. His internal battles are perfectly confusing in the first pages after the vault catastrophe, yet with each strange thought he realizes something even more disturbing is developing inside him.

Interestingly, Hodge’s braininess is overly effusive, seeming out of place as she reads more of average intelligence. She is playing catch up emotionally and physically through most of The Chamber of Ten; and when Hodge takes the initiative it’s unproductive to the plot. It’s a minor beef and doesn’t slow the story at all.

Hang up the logic when trying to think through the scheming of centuries old Venetian political functionaries and how their plots would pan out in the 21st century. Just roll with it folks. Think of it this way, when you are riding a roller coaster you aren’t busy calculating g-forces? No, you buckle in and let your gut lead you.

Hodge’s archeological team are minor players in the overall story but fill in blanks when needed and provide some diversity in the early narrative. If we were linked solely to the metaphysical mushiness of Hodge and Nico for the entire book, it would be a bit too much.

However, that very well established erotic-psychic connection is perfectly foiled by a very mysterious third-party, a ghost if you will, of Venice’s past. And that’s all we say about that.

We race around Venice, amid assassinations, building collapses, strange rituals and magical duels. You hop along with the authors and their cast waiting eagerly for that mystical two-fisted conclusion.

The Chamber of Ten snaps along with magical shock and awe. Grab a beverage, a beach chair and enjoy the macabre machinations.

The Chamber of Ten by Christopher Golden and Tim Lebbon was purchased by the Boston Book Bums.

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The Book on Phone Experiment: Pt. 1

20 Jul

Recently the Toyko International Book Fair took place and showed while crazed for tech, the Japanese as readers were slow to adopt e-books as consumed on dedicated e-readers.

However, as Publishers Weekly points out, the Japanese are wholeheartedly read on their smart phones.  Simply “trying out” an e-reader is an expensive proposition (especially if we bet on the wrong horse) and completely foolish  if we ignore our e-reader needs (touch screen, true ink appearing display, about the size of a trade paperback.)

And so, a thought occurred to us, as the Japanese do, so should we. As a result, we decided to try Kindle for the Blackberry Storm (RIMs touch screen competition to the Droid and iPhone.)

This post will take you through the process of downloading the Kindle App for the Storm, to sampling, use and functionality before finally settling on a book purchase.

The book- Bitter Seeds by Ian Tragellis- will be read entirely on 3.25 (diagonal) display. The book will receive our standard Biblioholic Review upon completion.

The Amazon Kindle for Blackberry is a very simple page to find on the mega-book seller website. The Kindle app, free to download, could be sent to the phone two ways either by signing in to your Amazon account or by typing in amazon.com/kindlebb. We tried the latter option which typed into the Storm’s browser turned up a rudimentary page that had a highlighted link to download for free.

The app download was very quick and without a hitch. A very digital transaction. Once loaded, the Kindle app brings you to a simple homepage. Instruction on how to navigate the app are intuitive, so long as you are familiar with your phone’s interface.

At the very text light Kindle homepage, a click of the phone’s menu page brought up a variety of options including sync books, sorting and archiving. But as it was the first book, you scroll and highlight to Shop in Kindle Store.

At the Kindle storefront you have a text search box for direct book hunts; as well as browsing by category, New York Times Best Sellers, Kindle Top Sellers, New & Noteworthy Books and Recommended for You.

Finding Bitter Seeds in the store, you get a small blurb as well as two buttons one for One Click purchasing and Try a Sample. After downloading a several sample pages you have the option of completing the purchase.

We went into our Amazon account and found a Kindle account opened, thanks to the app download, with rudimentary information about the user phone. Setting up One Click was necessary to complete the Kindle book transaction for the BlackBerry. Again, a painless process.

By clicking the “buy this book now ” option on the phone menu, the Kindle App began to download the full book. The alert  ‘Order in process’ was followed by a completed download.

Admittedly, the process felt more like a bank transaction rather than a book buying experience. Cold and slightly disconnected rather than the invested, tactile experience of in-store book buying. But this was the first step in our e-book experience, entirely too early to judge.

Next installment on Thursday, the reading experience and on Friday the review of Ian Tregillis Bitter Seeds.

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Biblioholic Review: The Dervish House

14 Jul

Ian McDonald’s The Dervish House can be described as Turkish cyberpunk; mashed together with Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, little bits of authors Jason Goodwin and Orhan Pamuk, and a healthy dose of Masamune Shirow’s Ghost in the Shell.

Yet it is so much more!

McDonald fully immerses the reader into 2027 Istanbul, as much of a hybrid tomorrow as today, a complex political-commercial-religious cybernetic Colossus astride Europe and Asia. Smartly, McDonald finds Istanbul’s core authenticity and layers on just the right amount of near-future wizardry to make the city breath with life.

Whether McDonald’s technologically swamped Istanbul hypothesis is correct matters little as he strongly wields humanity and faith as the double edged sword, with technology serving as its hilt, important but not vital.

The Dervish House is chock-a-block with nano technology (all the rage nearly a decade ago but freshly tilled by McDonald as functionary replacement for narcotics, caffeine pills or steroids) and its addition to the story give characters advantages that they wouldn’t otherwise have. And yet these technological boosters are just devices, at the end of the day human connections and the desire to do what is right propel the novel.

McDonald wrestles a number of characters into the plot stream, eventually settling into a fairly fast moving pace which is no small feat considering there are so many characters forming the core. If anything, Dervish House‘s additional characters are not quite superfluous, but more like rudimentary cogs in the story machine.

His puzzle pieces are an antiquities dealer, ambitious commodities speculator, idealistic marketing novice; as well as the three most compelling characters, Can the Boy Detective, Georgios an experimental economist and Necdet, a laggard fellow who becomes the center of the story when he witnesses a surrealist terrorist bombing of a commuter tram.

It is the three men, in various stages of life and luck, that bind the story together. Can, you see, is confined to a sound proof bubble world due to a defect that could kill him with the slightest of sound. A boy adventurer at heart Can monitors the world through his leaping and slithering nano-bots. And his accidental witnessing the very same tram bombing sets the inquisitive young boy on a path that could endanger his life.

Georgios, ethnically Greek and an interesting lineage for those familiar mostly icy and occasionally hot Turko-Greek relations, is a smart man haunted by regrets of a misshaped idealistic past. His sharpness, not forced or convenient, push smart concepts forward to logical conclusions. His relationship with Can bears emotionally engrossing fruit towards climax.

But it is poor old Necdet who watches a woman’s head fly off in the terrorist bombing that becomes the most interesting character. He begins to hallucinate, or so we think, beings from Islamic lore. And it is right then and there where McDonald goes to A+ territory.

McDonald, well informed of Islamic faith and mysticism, brilliantly incorporates religious themes into Dervish House without it becoming a spiritual fantasy. He inches forward with Necdet’s strange visions, using the Islamic concept of the djinn (beings created by God of smokeless fire which the West cartoonishly converted to ‘genie’) and Al-Khidr (or the Green Man of pre-Islamic lore, considered a prophet, spiritually a fresh and lively being) to blur the lines of spiritual ecstasy, madness and technology’s impact on man.

As readers with backgrounds in Middle Eastern history, we’re wary of potentially offensive or grossly overplayed Islamic stereotypes that Western writers typically fall into. Also, we were on alert for perpetuating the myth of Turkish culture as Arabic culture (completely different ethnologically.) McDonald does not walk into any cultural tiger traps with The Dervish House. In fact we found ourselves nodding approvingly at his keen use and appreciation for cultural threads and religious devices particular to Turkey.

It’s McDonald’s take on science and faith coming together in a strange, almost hallucinogenic reality, that injects a deeper more fulfilling nitro into the engine of Dervish House. Even the name, conjuring up the dervish traditions of the Bektashi Sufi order, infuses the story with a spiritual potential that is accentuated by the revelatory twists and turns of technology driven science fiction.

McDonald, unlike many science fiction or fantasy authors, doesn’t try to reinvent the world as ego exercise, instead Dervish House becomes a speculative Turkish tomorrow complete with yali, Grey Wolves, djinn and above all else, much more heart than technology.

The Dervish House by Ian McDonald from Pyr Books was purchased for review by the Boston Book Bums.

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Biblioholic Review: The Last Ember

2 Jul

As long-time readers of thrillers, we still hold out hope that with every new read we’ll be treated to a tale of adventure and intelligence. We’re thriller optimists. So when Daniel Levin’s The Last Ember was released in paperback in May we figured the new author might bring something new to the crowded field.

Levin ambitiously brought together nearly 2,000 years of history, ideas and characters with unfortunately lackluster results.

Yes, you will read praise for this formulaic thriller elsewhere, but it seems it is more praise for the structure, meeting the back beat of the genre, rather than the quality of the book itself.

The Last Ember centers on New York lawyer (with a background in the classics) Jonathan Marcus brought to Rome to refute an expert’s claim on the legality of an artifact. That artifact is the first piece in a large jigsaw puzzle that stretches from the plunder of Jerusalem in 70CE to the modern era.

Marcus then becomes embroiled in a hunt for Herodian treasure that in typical cliche “will change history forever.”

Of course, following the thriller family tree, everyone knows everyone, worked with/studied with/slept with everyone else no matter how big a pond they swim in. It’s called ‘ring knocking’ and we dislike it in fiction as much as we do in real life.

This is best exemplified by Marcus’ cohort in The Last Ember, former gal pal and antiquities expert, Dr. Emili Travia. The same expert claiming the illegitimacy of the fragment Marcus is hired to protect.

Levin’s description of heroine UNESCO expert Travia is Heffner-esque. The reader is introduced to Travia (recall you’re supposed to be impressed by her CV) by a description of her on a National Geographic cover, “A woman’s tan, fine-boned face framed by wet curtains of ash blond hair, a semiautomatic rifle slung across her bronze shoulder.”

Two things about Levin’s Travia, she oozes misogynist fantasy with token praise for her brain (with a later recollection of this antiquities angel being topless reading erotic poetry) and any antiquities/archaeological expert wielding firearms at a dig will see their professional credibility plummet.

As for the bad-guy in The Last Ember,  Salah ad-Din, named for Kurdish general and Islamic hero of the 12th century, Levin creates a one-dimensional Muslim with Nazi heritage (an offensively cliche double-shot.)

Also, Levin hangs his story telling hat on Josephus, possibly the single most discredited historian from antiquity.  Called everything from a bad historian to a coward, Josephus could be considered antiquity’s Lord Haw Haw. But Levin floats throughout the book that Josephus was in fact a spy and not a turncoat to the Jewish cause, a spy turned his enemies historian, and a key player in Levin’s secret/sacred plot. Even to we jaded thriller reader that is a stretch.

Levin inserts historical details, at times awkwardly, in order to back-fill for the novice. Some of his dates are fuzzy and his rationale for The Last Ember plot/search/world changing secret is a touch shaky. Without spoiling it, we were left thinking, ‘If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?’

The Last Ember jumps from tunnel to tunnel, from Colosseum to Jerusalem and back to Rome again, mini-climaxes that are exciting but not rewarding. Levin sprinkles in false flags and betrayals, like the typical thriller, but for each discovery and climax we were left feeling lead on, predictable peaks that you realize aren’t going to really pay off.

As for Marcus and Travia, their connection at the end is absolutely groan worthy and the dramatic conclusion, complete with Israel naval commandos and Vatican Swiss Guards racing to stop them, might be the silliest and campiest climax to a work of fiction since the darkest days of the Roger Moore-era James Bond.

The Last Ember is like cherry gelatin mixed with a can of fruit cocktail, exciting when you look at it from across the cafeteria, but pretty dull once you eat it.

The Last Ember by Daniel Levin from Riverhead Press was received as a free review paperback.

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Biblioholic Review: Sleepless

2 Jun

Parker Haas is a moral LAPD cop watching Sodom and Gomorrah of  Southern California crumble around him. Haas is a patrol officer turned undercover narcotics cop as the world unravels in a sleep deprived madness.

Haas is the hero in the no-win story established by Charlie Huston in Sleepless. Ten percent of the world’s population is infected by some sort of sleep robbing virus. As it spreads, the numbers grow and the victims suffer through waking nightmares that drive many into madness or suicide.

The Sleepless contagion can only be remedied by a drug called Dreamer. And that drug has eclipsed every other known med or illegal narcotic in value. The importance of the drug’s manufacturer is illustrated by seating him at tables with oil barons, arms producers and all the other titans of 21st century industry. Without Dreamer the world’s sanity would snap in an instant.

Haas is a brain with a badge, but flawed in his handling of his personal life. Racked by the Sleepless virus Haas’ wife, Rose, rapidly deteriorates into a brain rotting madness. His daughter, Omaha, might be immune. But who knows, they don’t want to test her to find out. Each time Haas returns home your heart wrenches. It is sad because you can see compassion and logic battling it out.

If Huston’s Sleepless suffers from any hiccups it is early on in the book when his style of exposition clumsily introduces Haas, the world of Sleepless and Haas evil-righteous shadow, Jasper.

Jasper is a hired gun, apparently ex-Special Forces left over from the Vietnam era (Huston does make a gaff describing Jasper leaping in and out of Cobras, can’t do that in a two seat gunship.) He is ruthless, bloody good at killing, as well a tactician adept at close quarters psychological warfare (ie mind games.) Jasper however ends up being the savior that Haas, in all his morality, could not be.

Huston copiously brand-drops, mostly when it comes to firearms, but pretty much every gadget, typewriter, computer or camera, is sprinkled liberally around Sleepless. Not in a bad way, just in ways that we modern-day consumers are pre-programmed to notice.

When Huston does explain the origins of the Sleepless virus, but you may not buy the tale. Not that Huston failed to write a convincing back story,  you might wonder if the truth is being told by the oily entry into Who’s Who.

Whether conscious or not, Huston utilizes the past two decades of near-apocalyptic riot and civil unrest imagery from Los Angeles to prime the reader. We don’t need broader views, we know the world is crumbling, the U.S. is engaged in oil wars around the world, and that increasing numbers of humanity cannot sleep.

If anything Huston could be accused of laying on the machismo a bit too thick, making a serious tone drift into black comedy (exemplified by his description of a Los Angeles high-rise bristling with anti-aircraft weapons. A bit too Escape from New York.)

Sleepless is modern crime-noir-sci-fi. It engages the reader to follow the bloody trail of broken minds to a fully satisfying ending of hope mixed into a cauldron of misery.

To us, near future dystopia is best served by playing it real and dark. And Charlie Huston’s Sleepless does exactly that.

Sleepless by Charlie Huston was purchased for our biblioholic enjoyment by the Boston Book Bums.

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