Dead Sleep, by Greg Iles

Picked this up on a pile of discounted books in WHS, and it turned out to be reasonably good. It's quite reminiscent of Death of a Blue Movie Star, and it does in fact have a review by Jeffery Deaver on the cover.

The story, written in the first person, is of a woman photo-journalist who stumbles on evidence for a serial killer when she realises that the latest painting in a series by a mysterious artist is of her identical twin sister who disappeared a year ago. She manages to involve herself with the investigation and works with the FBI to track down the clues to her sister's murderer.

The structure of the story is quite formulaic, with a fiesty woman protagonist, the slightly unconventional FBI agent that she teams up with (believe it or not they fall for each other), the over-confident psychological profiler and the murderer with the peculiar fetish (painting his victims and then selling the pictures). But it was a good read, and - until the end where we get laboured explanations for everyone's odd behaviour throughout the book - quite gripping.

Will be worth picking up another of his books if I see it going cheap or in the library.

Completed : 05-Feb-2004

Released with BookCrossing id : 397-1565826

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