Dead Sleep [Mass Market Paperback]

Greg Iles (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 2002

They are called "The Sleeping Women." A series of unsettling paintings in which the nude female subjects appear to be not asleep, but dead. Photojournalist Jordan Glass has another reason to find the paintings disturbing...The face on one of the nudes is her own-or perhaps the face of her twin sister, who disappeared and is still missing. At the urging of the FBI, Jordan becomes both hunter and hunted in a search for the anonymous artist-an obsessed killer who seems to know more about Jordan and her family than she is prepared to face...

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Greg Iles lives up to the promise of his previous bestseller, 24 Hours, with a new thriller that showcases his ability to deliver top-level suspense as well as multidimensional characterization. When Jordan Glass, a world-renowned photojournalist, happens on an exhibit of a series of paintings known as "The Sleeping Women," she is stunned to discover that one of the models--a nude who, like the other women in the paintings, looks dead rather than asleep--is her mirror image. But Jordan knows the face in the painting isn't her; it's her twin sister, Jane, who disappeared from her New Orleans home more than a year ago, and is presumed to have been murdered by a serial killer who's been snatching women off the streets of the Crescent City for at least that long. None of the bodies of the missing women have turned up, but their faces match the models in the other Sleeping Women paintings. A veteran FBI agent named John Kaiser brings Jordan into the Bureau's hunt for the anonymous artist, who may also know something about the disappearance of Jordan's father in Vietnam almost 30 years before.

This is a taut, well-crafted thriller with a nice secondary love story that's woven into the action without slowing it down. Jordan is a fascinating, many-sided character who's a little too tough to be wholly believable, but that's a minor quibble. While winning well-deserved new fans for Iles, Dead Sleep will keep his readers awake until the very last page. --Jane Adams --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Iles continues to amaze with his incredible range, this time around crafting a complex serial killer novel with the intimacy of a smalltown cozy and the punch of a techno-thriller. As different from Spandau Phoenix and 24 Hours as possible, it scores with surefooted plotting, a diverse cast of characters and perfectly calibrated suspense. An anonymous painter's series of candidly posed nudes called The Sleeping Woman bursts on the art scene, each painting selling in the million-dollar range overnight amid rumors that the models are not sleeping but dead. Beautiful, burned-out war photographer Jordan Glass chances into a show and recognizes the subject of a painting as her identical twin, Jane, who was kidnapped near her New Orleans home and never found. Jordan contacts the FBI agent who handled her sister's case, thereby setting in motion a hunt that ties the paintings to the disappearance of at least 11 New Orleans women. Persuading the FBI task force to add her to the team, Jordan tags along to Tulane University, where evidence points to art department head Roger Wheaton, who has a peculiar terminal illness, and his brilliant but disturbed graduate students. Meanwhile, Jordan falls for damaged FBI agent John Kaiser, and together they link her sister's case to a French expat art collector from Vietnam who knew Jordan's war photographer father who disappeared in Cambodia. Are all the women really dead? Is Jordan's father alive and involved? Is there more than one killer? Iles keeps the reader guessing right up to the double surprise ending, delivering the perfect final payoff his readers expect.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Mass Market Paperback: 496 pages
• Publisher: Signet; Reissue edition (July 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0451206525
• ISBN-13: 978-0451206527
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 4.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (140 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #73,942 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Greg Iles was born in 1960 in Germany where his father ran the US Embassy medical clinic during the height of the Cold War. After graduating from the University of Mississippi in 1983 he performed for several years with the rock band Frankly Scarlet and is currently member of the band The Rock Bottom Remainders. His first novel, Spandau Phoenix, a thriller about war criminal Rudolf Hess, was published in 1993 and became a New York Times bestseller. Iles went on to write ten bestselling novels, including Third Degree, True Evil, Turning Angel, Blood Memory, The Footprints of God, and 24 Hours (released by Sony Pictures as Trapped, with full screenwriting credit for Iles). He lives in Natchez, Mississippi.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Thriller Meets Police Procedural, September 16, 2001

By 

Untouchable (Sydney, NSW Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dead Sleep (Hardcover)

Greg Iles has taken on the interesting, and surely daunting for a male author, task of writing a book in the first person from the female perspective. Not only is he dealing with the feelings of the opposite sex towards quite emotional issues, his main character is also a troubled soul, having lost her father when she was young, her mother to alcoholism and her sister to an unknown kidnapper. On top of that he deals with some pretty major issues such as rape and child abuse. Although, it's a big task, he has presented his character in a believable and interesting fashion and, to my mind, pulls it off.

Jordan Glass is a photojournalist who does a lot of travelling around the world. While she is Hong Kong, she visits an art gallery and finds herself face-to-face with what appears to be a painting of her. It is actually her twin sister, who has been missing for around eighteen months, presumed dead. The chilling aspect of the painting for Jordan is that the subject is supposed to be sleeping, but looks very much dead.

Jordan immediately notifies the FBI and has them reopen her sister's case. She travels back to the United States and manages to convince the FBI agents that she should be allowed to take an active part in the investigation. The hunt begins for the artist and the women that are his subjects, for Jordan's sister is only one of many missing women who have turned up on canvas.

All in all Dead Sleep is an exciting, smart-paced book mixing a thriller scenario with aspects of the typical police procedural. I did find myself having to deal with a couple of small quibbles, such as the photojournalist outsmarting the entire FBI when it comes to investigation and psychoanalysis. However, they were minor compared to the entertainment provided by another imaginative story courtesy of Mr Iles.

36 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Master of the Intelligent Thriller, July 16, 2001

By 

Timothy F. Halloran (Medfield, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Dead Sleep (Hardcover)

Greg Iles is, simply put, the best thriller author working today. There are many others who are good, but all have evident weaknesses. Cornwell? Artificial dialogue and unrealistically ornery characters. Grisham/Crichton/Deaver? Formulaic writing and inconistent ability to write subtle, textured stories. Etc.

Iles scores big points with vivid characters, sympathetic villains, flawed protagonists, and enough perverse coloring to keep things edgy. He has never fallen into the trap of sticking with one subject - Nazi intrigue, Internet Sex, Serial Killers, Kidnappers, Civil Rights - all fall within his realm, and he puts in the research and elbow grease to write about his subplots and not around them.

I enjoy Iles' ability to bring characters to life through their passions and careers without pulling the focus away from the spiraling plot. Jordan Glass is a photojournalist, while the antagonists of this book are artists in the paint medium. This juxtaposition of careers and filters through which to view the world enables the characters to communicate through a common thread which facilitates impassioned dialogue.

Writing through the eyes of a beautiful tomboy also makes it clear that Iles can capably write circles around others who try this type of narrative risk (eg. James Patterson). He pulls off the trick to make her appear strong yet wounded, willful yet needy. There are no artificially difficult FBI agents who infiltrate almost all the run-of-the-mill thrillers and even the secondary characters are well fleshed out and interesting in their own right. Jordan's FBI "partner" John Kaiser is a Vietnam vet with a difficult past. Her sister is her identical twin, which in and of itself provides many interesting moments. The mysterious semi-antagonist, semi-protagonist M. De Becque is somehow established as a full-fledged character despite very little actual dialogue. The four primary antagonists are some of the most textured and charismatic I have encountered in thriller fare. Their actions are explained, there fears are bared and their commonalities with the protagonists are explored.

I could write a plot summary, but others here will handle here. Unlike a Deaver book in which you can generally guess that the most unlikely villain is indeed the villain, Iles refuses to insult our intelligence, and lets the story unfold in a natural light (hmmm.). The ending is not wasted on contrivance - instead it expresses, as do other Iles books, that the end-game in human life is survival and in the excitement and rewards life can bring through its trials. This allows him to finish his novels with a flourish where others fall flat.

As Wilde once wrote "They think a murderer's heart would taint each simple seed they sow. It is not true! God's kindly earth is kindlier than men know, and the red rose would but blow more red and the white rose whiter blow." (Ballad of Reading Gaol). Enjoy.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Iles has the Gift of Language, December 5, 2001

By 

Newt Gingrich (Washington, DC United States) - See all my reviews
("THE")   

This review is from: Dead Sleep (Hardcover)

Greg Iles is my newest favorite novelist. His power of language and imagination are amazing. Every one of his novels is amazing (I have read 5 of the 6 he has written and I am reading the sixth now.). Each novel has a totally different premise with totally different characters. There is a bias toward the southern but the novels are worldwide in scope. This one begins in Hong Kong and goes to New York before ending up in New Orleans with a side trip to the Cayman Islands.

Iles has a wonderful sense of life, mystery and history and how they blend together to form one tapestry. He also has a wonderful gift to construct words that will keep you engrossed for the entire book.

In Dead Sleep a professional combat photographer sees pictures of dead women in an art exhibition in Hong Kong including a portrait of her twin sister who had been killed in New Orleans. She is compelled to track down the artist and ends up ensnared in a pattern of serial killing with macabre overtones (like Robert Parker and Stuart Woods, Iles now has a female protagonist). She inevitably ends up working with the FBI in a very strained relationship (it says something about the Bureau or about modern literary convention that you can only work with the FBI in a strained relationship).

I cannot recommend Iles books to highly and this certainly maintains the standard.