Dead Sleep
by Greg Iles
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Book Reviews of Dead Sleep
Book Review: Enjoyable, but Outlandish
Summary: 4 Stars
I read a lot of thrillers, and I really enjoy Greg Iles' work. He is really excellent at creating fascinating, complex characters. Most of the characters in his books are highly intelligent adults, and he is really superb in how he crafts his dialogue. Iles is also highly skilled in structuring plots that keep the reader turning the pages. In terms of writing quality, Iles is probably one of the best suspense writers working today.
DEAD SLEEP is a very good suspense novel that contains all the strengths I just described. This is a serial killer book, but with an interesting twist -- the victims of the killer are featured in a series of highly successful paintings. Much of this book centers on the FBI investigation of this killer, which focuses on some highly eccentric members of the art world in New Orleans.
The flaw with DEAD SLEEP is the problem I have with much of Iles' work, which is that the plot is outlandish. Jordan Glass, the heroine, is a 40-year old photographer with no law enforcement experience. Despite this fact, she practically takes control of the FBI investigation, outsmarting a group of highly experienced professionals. In-between interrogations (which she often takes charge of, despite her complete lack of experience), Jordan also finds some spare time to kindle some romance with a hunky FBI agent, in a subplot which I personally found contrived and ludicrous. The ending of this book is equally silly, with a remarkably unbelievable explanation of why and how the killer committed the murders.
But that's okay. Iles is a highly skilled writer, and this book is a lot of fun to read despite it's over-the-top nature. I read this book in two sittings and thoroughly enjoyed it. My advice, however, is to make THE QUIET GAME your first novel from Iles; I found that book a little bit more believable than this one, and just as well written.
Book Review: Great thriller, original and twisty
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a very good thriller. I'm new to Iles, and this is a good first taste. I don't think he has a very individual style...as a prose writer, there is little to really set him apart from many others. You would not think upon picking this book up without seeing the cover "Oh yes, this was definitely written by Iles", like you would with some writers such as Jeffery Deaver and John Connolly. But that isn't really very important...
What is important is the fact that this is an ingenious, bizarre and very incredibly original thriller. In these days when the genre is swamped (forunately, it's swamped almost entirely with excellent authors) it is quite hard to turn out a book which is completely original, and yet writers like Iles manage to do it again and again. This one stands out particularly. Even the lead characters profession is original.
The story has more twists than a rollercoaster, almost none of which you cna preempt. (Especially the last great twist which comes really near the end.) The plot is intriguing, and unlike anything i've read before. It's not quite as enjoyable or thrilling as some i've come across, but it's brilliance makes up for that.
The characters are human and sympathetic, and the relationship between the two leads is handled subtly and well. These are characters we definitely care something about.
One point: at one stage in the book, Iles uses the old "Does not happen half as often in real life as fiction writers would have us believe." lecture, but then immediately goes on to include the thing which he is talking about as part of the solution. Which sort of spoilt the illusion, but whatever.
Last Word: A very original and enjoyable thriller which twists and turns its way to a satisfying conclusion.
Book Review: Well-Plotted, Unique Thriller
Summary: 4 Stars
Others have already gone over the finer points of the story in their reviews, so I'll concentrate on the writing itself. Iles definitely knows how to create unique crimes and the characters who commit them - the methods and scenarios he utilized for the villain(s) of the piece were unlike any that I had read about before.
Iles' weakness, then, isn't in the overall story-telling in this case, but lies in the fact that at times, he telegraphs his punches too much - the foreshadowing used in some scenes had all the subtlety of an anvil falling from the sky and hitting a cartoon character on the head.
Then, too, the romance element in the story felt, at times, entirely too rushed, not nearly developed enough, and even somewhat not-in-keeping with the main character and what she'd gone through. My last quibble is with the fact that Iles' main character - a photographer - was allowed to outsmart the entire FBI many different times throughout the book, and that she was basically given free reign to participate in (and even take over, at times) the entire investigation.
That said, those points ultimately took a backseat to the fact that the story itself is incredibly interesting, and is full of twists. It incorporates family drama, the long-term effects of war, terminal illness, psychological disorders, the art world, murder, and the list goes on and on. Iles successfully managed to juggle each of those elements, and wove them into a coherent, (mostly) well-plotted, intelligent thriller.
The book is not perfect, but it is intriguing, and most readers should find the reading of it to be time well spent.
Book Review: So Much Potential and then He Dropped the Ball
Summary: 3 Stars
Greg Iles' thriller novel "Dead Sleep" is about Jordan Glass. Jordan is a famous photojournalist who is in Hong Kong working on a photo book she is publishing. Trying to de-stress from the horrors she has viewed through the lens of her camera, Jordan decides to take advantage of Hong Kong's cultural side and pops in to the art museum while she is there. Jordan begins to notice that people are staring at her, not because they recognize her for who she is, but for some other reason she cannot put her finger on. As Jordan strolls through the museum, she comes upon a collection of paintings known as The Sleeping Woman. Jordan learns that The Sleeping Women are pictures of nude women who were thought to be sleeping, but actually appear to be dead. Jordan is further shocked when she stares into one of the canvases and sees her own face. Jordan's twin sister Jane has been missing for over a year and Jordan fears that she has stumbled upon her sister's fate in the museum. Now, Jordan must find out who is painting the infamous pictures and what exactly happened to her sister.
This novel had tremendous potential and I can definitely say that I did enjoy it. However, the first half of the novel, which was very exciting and suspenseful, couldn't balance out the latter portion which was dry and predictable. I kept waiting for the "big twist" which never came through, which was really disappointing and made the ending anti-climactic. Plus, there was a tangent side-story running throughout about Vietnam that ended up being nothing more than a tangent. I think with a little more effort, this could have been an excellent thriller, instead of a mediocre one.
Book Review: Good but not great!
Summary: 4 Stars
Having read Iles earlier work Spandou Phoenix, I was thinking that this would be the same type of tense thriller all the way up to the end. Though this book is a fairly decent read, I was a little disappointed up front because the story is told in first person. Usually, this ruins the suspense because you know that nothing too bad is going to happen to the narrator. The second objection I had was that the narrator is supposed to be female, while the writer is male. This in itself is usually a turn-off but the writer seemed to be able to pull off a somewhat convincing first person tale.
Jordan Glass, a political photographer happens into an exhibit of paintings in a Chinese art gallery entitled "The Sleeping Woman" When Jordan notices one of the paintings bears an incredible resemblance to her kidnapped twin sister all sorts of alarm bells go off in her head. She manages to contact the FBI agent that helped her with her sister's investigation and they determine that all of the painting resemble woman that had gone missing. Thus begins a search to unravel the mystery and locate the anonymous painter that created them and possibly locate the missing women in case any of them are alive.
The book plods along for about 230 pages and then picks up and moves to a fairly tense conclusion. I had a few problems with the total lack of following proper police procedure and what the FBI allows a civilian to know and to participate in. If not for the obvious problems I have mentioned I could have easily given this book five stars but as it is I give it just slightly under four.