Sleepless

October 5, 2009
In Huston’s impressive, challenging thriller set in a postapocalyptic Los Angeles, a devastating illness renders the afflicted unable to sleep. In about a year, those with SLP (as the sleepless illness is known) deteriorate and die. Amid the city’s rampant violence and lawlessness, LAPD cop Parker “Park” Haas tries to persuade himself that a future exists for his newborn daughter. As the outside world becomes increasingly dangerous, Park pursues an undercover investigation that takes him deep into the milieu of an online game called Chasm Tide, into which many people have retreated. As in the author’s Joe Pitt vampire series (My Dead Body
, etc.), this book has at its heart a love story: Park’s wife is dying from SLP, and Park begins to fear he may be getting it, too. Can the mysterious mercenary known only as Jasper help? Some fans of Huston’s crime fiction may not be comfortable with a novel that itself resembles a role-playing game, but it will gain him a whole new readership.

May 15, 2010
Edgar Award nominee Huston's (www.pulpnoir.com) third stand-alone novel follows "The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death" (2009), also available from Blackstone Audio. In it, an epidemic of terminal sleeplessness hits the world, and society slides ominously toward doomsday. Enter undercover police officer Parker T. Haas, tasked with tracking down an illicit drug that will offer relief to the sleepless, as well as aging assassin Jasper, who seeks information on a paramilitary contractor. Though talented actors/narrators Mark Bramhall ("Naked Lunch") and Ray Porter ("Tearing Down the Wall of Sound") do their best to alleviate the confusion caused by the constantly shifting viewpoints, this ambitious endeavor ultimately falls short: the tale is complicated, the characters are shallow, and the many lengthy descriptions detract from its successful telling. Recommended only for those libraries where Huston has a following. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 9/1/09.Ed.]Denise A. Garofalo, Mount Saint Mary Coll. Lib., Newburgh, NY

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 29, 2010
Huston's brilliant mixture of sci-fi and noir crime, in dialogue with and arguably improving on such past dystopian visions as the film Blade Runner
and William Gibson's Neuromancer
, features Los Angeles in the throes of a bizarre epidemic that renders the infected sleepless and bound for eventual death, and two narrators: young undercover LAPD cop and family man Parker “Park” Haas and the aging but amazingly resourceful mercenary known as Jasper. The use of dual readers—Mark Bramhall and Ray Porter, as Jasper and Park respectively—helps to identify the points of view. For the cop, a former Stanford professor struggling to care for his family and do his job, Porter employs an intelligent voice tinged by bitterness and anxiety. But it's Bramhall who's given the plum assignment: Jasper is cool, cynical, dryly humorous, and always in control, even when faced with overwhelming odds. He's an actor's dream, and Bramhall's dry, bemused, and at times darkly humorous delivery is stunning. A Ballantine hardcover (Reviews, Oct. 5).