|
[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
When this novel came out last year in Britain, it was greeted with a chorus of critical praise. Now that it has appeared in a US edition, it is likely to meet with similar enthusiasm. Sleepyhead is a novel about a serial killer more twisted than most of that horrifying lot, because this one seeks not to kill but to induce a massive stroke in his victims that will produce something called "locked-in syndrome," in which the sufferer remains fully conscious but unable to move a muscle, communicating, if at all, through a twitch of an eyelid. In his view, the perpetrator is conferring a gift of freedom from the body, not a living death. It is, thankfully, a condition very difficult to induce, so most of his victims do not survive his experiments. Preying on young women, he is successful, if that's the word, in only one case, Alison Willets, an unfortunate young woman of immense spirit, whose thoughts we periodically overhear and who is the brightest spot in this chilling book. On his trail is DI Tom Thorne, a typically driven detective, who is convinced almost from the beginning that he knows the identity of the culprit. He is determined to bring him down, if he has to cut legal corners to do it. A further complication is Thorne's attraction to Anne Coburn, Alison's doctor, which may be clouding his judgement. Particularly striking about this accomplished first novel is the degree to which Billingham manages, though clever misdirection, to maintain doubt about the killer's identity throughout, despite a relatively short list of candidates from which to choose. My chief reservation is that the killer's rationale struck me as a bit inconsistent with his actual motivation when it is ultimately revealed. Tom Thorne, too, is a bit of a cliche, with his failed marriage and guilty dreams about past failures. Nevertheless, Sleepyhead is a difficult book to forget, in part because of Alison's moving struggle against her fate, but mostly because the crime that has trapped her in a hospital bed for the rest of her life embodies our worst nightmare.
Reviewed by Yvonne Klein, August 2002
This book has more than one review. Click here to show all.
[ Top ]
QUICK SEARCH:
Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]
|
