In Sleep No More, the latest in Susan Crandall’s long list of Romantic thrillers, the author introduces us to Abby Whitmore, who has more than her fair share of problems. Having survived a sleepwalking incident in her youth that resulted in the deadly fire she set to her family home, she’s been under a doctor’s care, and has pretty successfully beaten the problem. Or so she thinks.
Then one morning, she wakes up to find herself out in the middle of her kitchen, a track of muddy footprints leading out to the kitchen door. To her relief, no one has been hurt—no, that comes later, when she wakes up to find her van crashed in a marsh off Suicide Road; worse yet, there’s been a fatality in the accident—a senator’s son—and Abby can’t remember how she got into her van, or so far away from home, nor hitting anything at all, much less spinning off into the marsh.
But she does remember seeing an extra set of taillights, and knows she wasn’t the one to call 911 to report the accident. That’s about all she remembers, though, and the gaps in her memory lead her to a long spell of self-doubt and attempts to keep sleep at bay, in an effort to rid herself of the dreaded urge to sleepwalk.
Enter local psychiatrist Jason Coble, who right away becomes an obsession for Abby; and he makes keeping her hands to herself long enough to get better, a real challenge. But he is eager to help, and genuinely cares for Abby, helping her with the extra chore of caring for her father, who has the beginnings of Alzheimer’s Disease, and helping her deal with the floral arrangements for the funeral of the senator’s son, and dealing with the bizarre occurrences of break ins, vandalism and theft, the reader starts to get the feeling Abby should just tell everyone where to go, or maybe Jason should just take her on as his sole client, ala Tom in The Godfather. Because finding the missing driver, and who wants Abby dead and why, and not to mention dealing with his own family trouble, may just be a job with massive overtime.
What happened? Who are these mysterious folk and what do they all have to do with one another? And will Abby ever get over herself need to self-inflict spinsterhood? You’ll have to read to find out!
If this sounds like a really complicated story, it is. Crandall starts bogging Abby down from the beginning and darn near doesn’t stop until the very end. In the end, it was a good read, a little light on the romance for the most part, and this reader could have done without at least two of the heaped on bits of turmoil. I have to thank the folks at Grand Central for introducing me to this fine author, and all in all, I enjoyed the Sleep No More and thought it to be full of nail-biting intrigue. I think fans of the genre will enjoy it very much.
You can find this one just about anywhere, from Amazon to any Tampa Borders or Barnes and Noble, or order it from Grand Central here.
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