Customer Reviews

No Sleep till Wonderland: A Novel

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The bar was set high by Tremblay's first release, The Little Sleep. However, in this follow-up to The Little Sleep, Tremblay delivers a powerful story featuring the unique narcoleptic detective, Mark Genevich. While Tremblay's wit is displayed throughout this novel, the mood and atmosphere is much darker than The Little Sleep. The reader is plunged into Genevich's world, often wondering what is reality and what is dreaming. Genevich becomes involved in a police investigation of an arson and death, becoming a suspect himself. As Genevich delves deeper into the mystery, the line between dream and reality becomes more blurred. His search for answers leads Genevich down a very dangerous path. Does he have the ability to discover the truth? Can he handle that truth?

You won't be disappointed by this book. Tremblay is truly at the top of his game, and you would be missing a gem of a story if you miss out on this one.

Both of Paul Tremblay's Mark Genevich books, The Little Sleep and No Sleep Till Wonderland, are maybe the most inventive and enjoyable contemporary PI novels I've come across. Tremblay has a wonderful voice with very clever and funny observations that populate his writing. While The Little Sleep pays homage to Chandler's The Big Sleep is about Genevich uncovering dark secrets about his past, No Sleep Till Wonderland pays homage to Chandler's The Long Goodbye and is all about Genevich's present. The story has to do with Genevich trying to help out a friend and keep a woman safe, and while No Sleep is strongly plotted, it's Tremblay voice and strong+sympathetic characterization of narcoleptic PI, Mark Genevich, that makes this such a wonderful ride. It's impossible for me to recommend these two books strongly enough. Anyone with the slightest interest in crime fiction needs to read these, which in my mind are the very best of the Boston PI series.

I couldn't wait to reacquaint myself with private eye/narcoleptic Mark Genevich, not that I was losing any sleep over it. Like Mark says about being disrepectful to stories(in a group therapy-like setting), they don't happen the way that most are told. In real stories there's no order, no beginning, middle, or end. They are messy, unpredicable, and usually cruel.
This then, is the in & out-of-it world that has become the reality for Mark, since the accident that led to his narcolepsy? It is the slipping between the worlds of sleep/awake that bring a metaphysical/wonderland-rabbit-hole perspective that the character appears to: dress-in/adress-to, make sence of what is real? His dialogue slip streams with this awareness that others are not privy to, but the reader is/Sounds like something the asleep me would do. He's a rascal, that one./My Jurassic age has giant gaps in the fossil record. Am I remembering what actually happened or remembering some previous retelling or reshaping of what actually happened?
The author never loses a grip on his character. This has to be phenomenal tasking on the author's part simply because/I'am a barely there cadaver who shouldn't be donated to science/It's a place for small-timers, their small deals, and their smaller dreams. I feel right at home/Oh, he's so smooth, like chunky-style peanut butter.
That's the kind of writing that nailed it for me in The Little Sleep & continues in spades with Wonderland. That the author can write such an easy to follow story with such an original off-beat character and do it so the reader readily goes along for the ride is/The driver doesn't believe in smooth acceleration or stop, bouncing me around the backseat like a ball bearing in a spray can.
So tell your family & friends to take a not-so-sleepy ride with Tremblay's narcoleptic detective, Mark Genevich/Great somebody told her, and I'm sure she's hardly the only person swinging on that grapevine.

HIGHLY Recommended !!!!!!!

I haven't read "The Little Sleep", Paul Tremblay's 1st mystery starring Mark Genevich, so "No Sleep Till Wonderland" is my first introduction to this updated-Noir protagonist.

Mark Genevich suffers from narcolepsy and cataplexy, as well as the long-term effects of a terrible car accident. And I do mean that he suffers, physically, spiritually, mentally. He is trying to hold his life together, and it's pretty hard when he can hold conversations with people while sleeping during a narcoleptic attack (not remembering the conversation later, of course), as well as having vivid hallucinations (which he does remember).

Marks's nominal profession is private eye, in South Boston. One day, he's hired by a support group acquaintance to follow the beautiful wife of wealthy man. The husband thinks she's cheating on him. Mark's surveillance, however, turns up nothing but innocent shopping. After he files his report, he finds out he was deliberately given the wrong woman to follow. In uncovering what the heck was going on with that, he finds ID theft and a murder and more unhappy amoral people than you can shake a stick at.

The writing style is Noir, dark and cynical, with a kernal of hidden integrity, and, of course, the writing is full of similes. The world is a cheerless, dangerous place, and all you can do is survive, though the book ends on an up note. The book is also crass; this is definitely not a cozy. I bring that up as a point of information. I enjoyed the book, but it was a little too "blue" for my tastes.

There is some great writing and, as I mentioned, similes. Mark and his mother
have "an argument that went atomic. We're still in its nuclear winter."

"A man struts in, walking to the beat of his own inflated ego."

"Eddie laughs at me, and he sounds like the world."

And you can really feel the Sam Spade flavor, such as this description. Mark's describing the end of an unsolicited fight: "I know better than to stand there and spin some clever closing argument line. I'm not that clever, and I need the head start. One has to know one's limitations."

Sometimes, though, the similes get a bit overdone, and I found myself wishing for some straightforward description: "He drives and talks and breathes slowly, a tree sloth with a license." Sometimes there's so much extraneous description piled on that you lose the murder thread of the story. This isn't necessarily bad, unless you are reading the book because you like mysteries (like me).

I'll close with a great quote from "Black Eye" lyrics, by the group Uncle Tupelo. This quote is one of two that introduces the book. I'm still not sure exactly how this reflects the story, but it's a great stanza.

"When he realized that this one was here to stay
He took down all the mirrors in the hallway
And thought only of his younger face."