The Little Sleep
A Novel
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
The Bram Stoker Award–winning author of Survivor Song and The Cabin at the End of the World “slices, dices, and spins the neo-noir in his own strange way” in his “fast, smart, and completely satisfying”* debut novel featuring a narcoleptic detective from Southie.
*Stewart O’Nan
The Little Sleep is Paul Tremblay’s nod to Raymond Chandler starring a PI who nods off. Mark Genevich is a South Boston private detective who happens to have a severe form of narcolepsy, which includes hypnagogic hallucinations, like waking dreams. Unsurprisingly, his practice is not exactly booming.
Then one day the daughter of an ambitious district attorney and a contestant on the reality talent show American Star named Jennifer Times comes to him for help—or does she? A man has stolen her fingers, she claims, and she’d like Genevich to get them back. When the PI wakes up from what must surely be a hallucination, the only evidence that his client may have been real is a manila envelope on his desk. Inside are revealing photos of Jennifer. Is Genevich dealing with a blackmailer or an exhibitionist? And where is the mysterious young lady, who hopefully still has her fingers attached?
The detective has no choice but to plunge into what proves to be a bad dream of a case, with twists and turns even his subconscious could not anticipate. Chloroforming the hardboiled crime genre then shaking it awake and spinning it around, Paul Tremblay delivers a wholly original, wildly imaginative, gleefully entertaining noir mystery—guaranteed to keep you up all night, even if Mark Genevich won’t be joining you.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
South Boston PI Mark Genevich, the wisecracking, narcoleptic narrator of this enticingly offbeat if lumbering series opener from Tremblay (Survivor Song), is prone to hallucinations. After falling asleep while meeting Jennifer Times, a new client and contestant on a popular TV show, the inept Mark awakens convinced Jennifer has hired him to find the fingers somebody stole from her hand the day before. Scandalous photographs of her, left in an envelope on his desk, lead him to believe she's the subject of blackmail. However, interviews with Jennifer and her father, a hotshot DA, indicate she's neither his client nor the victim of a crime. Somebody, though, is determined to get their hands on those photographs and stop Mark from uncovering the startling mystery behind them. Tremblay deviously blurs the boundaries between the real and the imagined, as his unreliable narrator tries to fend off hired goons, avoid inopportune and sometimes dangerous naps, and muddle through his false recollections. The quirky Mark helps redeem the befuddled, sluggish plot. Tremblay puts a fresh spin on the detective genre.
