The little sleep: a novel

From Publishers WeeklySouth Boston PI Mark Genevich struggles to lead a seminormal life despite his narcolepsy, whose symptoms include falling asleep mid-conversation and hallucinations, in this uninspired noir from Stoker-finalist Tremblay (_City Pier_). When Jennifer Times, the daughter of prominent DA William "Billy" Times, comes to Mark's office with racy photographs of herself she received anonymously, Mark agrees to take her case. But after trying to contact both Jennifer—who's a contestant on an American Idol–like TV show—and her father, Mark realizes that Jennifer's visit was a hallucination. The photographs are his only tether to reality, one that becomes even more tenuous when he discovers not only that the subject isn't Jennifer, but that her father and his goons will do anything to get the mysterious photos back. Despite a promisingly quirky hero, Tremblay's plot is so full of holes that readers may wonder if they've suffered from one of Mark's frequent blackouts. (Mar.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. FromAs if the severe narcolepsy he developed after an auto accident hasn’t been enough of a stumbling block for Mark Genevich, the wisecracking South Boston PI now seems to have drawn the ire of the district attorney and his dour goons. He can’t be sure because his condition also triggers harrowing hallucinations, such as the woman who seems to show up at his office begging him to help find her stolen fingers. Hallucination or not, she looked a lot like the DA’s daughter, a finalist in an American Idol–style singing contest, and didn’t the DA grow up with Genevich’s late father in Southie? With the help of his acerbic-but-doting mom, Genevich stirs himself from his usual computer-based investigations and sets out into the hostile real world to solve the case—or at least figure out if a case even exists. Although the plot of this Chandler homage grows ragged around its increasingly surreal edges, it’s hard not to root for the loopy Genevich. (“I’m not peachy,” he explains at one point. “I’m not feeling any fruit in particular.”) This is a promising debut. --Frank Sennett