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It's not surprising that amnesia often plays a role in crime fiction. It compounds the mystery, with the hero forced to solve not only a crime but his own identity. Then there are mysteries that feature a range of disability: Lincoln Rhyme, a quadriplegic action hero, Monk, whose quest for justice is obsessive-compulsive, and most notably Lionel Essrog, the Tourettic hero of MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN. Now Paul Tremblay adds a new wrinkle: a narcoleptic detective. Mark Genevich has a problem. Not only does he hallucinate, he's prone to fall asleep on his clients. Though he may appear alert as he takes nonsense notes, he has no memory of who he talked to and what problem he agreed to solve. His mysteries come wrapped in enigma inside of an autobiographical riddle. The story begins with a hypnogogic hallucination that's a gruesome play on a standard hardboiled opener. When the dame who walks into his office offers him her hand, she's missing her fingers and wants to know who took them. When Genevich comes to, he has some disturbing photographs on his desk, notes he apparently took while talking with a client, and no idea what he's been hired to do. But he blunders forth, using what clues he has to figure out who's guilty – of something; he's not sure what. Tremblay has set himself a difficult task: maintaining pace when his narrator is constantly falling asleep. That onset of sleep itself becomes suspenseful, like one of those nightmares that couples urgency with paralysis. Genevich is a sympathetic character – disfigured in an accident that killed his best friend, deluding himself that he can solve crimes when he can barely solve the mystery of what he was doing ten minutes ago. His mother Ellen, possibly the most heroic character in the book, looks after him unobtrusively, but his father, who died years ago, is just a puzzling memory haunting Genevich's dreams. The hapless detective wise-cracks his way through the story, his black humor tinged with tragedy.
Reviewed by Barbara Fister, February 2009
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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