NO SLEEP FOR THE DEAD by Adrian Magson

Good morning bookies! Time comes on apace and today's blog is another beautifully crafted, well reasoned crime review from one of the best reviewers in the world. Me, of course. I go to great lengths to make sure that you only get the best.

NO SLEEP FOR THE DEAD by Adrian Magson. In 1989 an Eastern
German is killed by border guards while fleeing through no-man’s land into the West. No big deal, really; it’s happened enough times before. Except this time the defector was set-up by those he was fleeing to join, a double-cross that comes back to haunt the junior Military Policeman assigned to the case, Frank Palmer.

Many years later Palmer is a PI in London, working with long-time friend Riley Gavin, an investigative reporter looking for reports to investigate. The world of freelance journalism isn’t all that lucrative at the moment, or particularly busy, so when Palmer asks her to join him in serving some papers to a local scam artist she’s happy to oblige. It’s easy enough, the papers are served without a hitch, but as they are riding the elevator back downstairs Frank encounters the ghost of a man who should have died long before, a man who was, and is, very dangerous.

Following up this weird encounter, Frank discovers that the man who should have been dead, who should have died in a car wreck with Frank’s partner investigating the border shooting, has become a smuggler of art and possibly things much, much more dangerous. Things become sticky as Frank and Riley investigate, trailed by an old nemesis come back for revenge.

The tale is well told, the pacing good, the characters well though out...and yet it sometimes feels as if the author is going through the paces. The danger level is high yet the reader never quite feels as through the Frank and Riley are really in danger, that something bad might actually happen to them. Imagine the classic movie ‘Casablanca’ without Bogart and Bergman in the roles of Rick and Ilsa. It still would have been a great movie, but it would not have been the same movie. So it is here. ‘No Sleep For the Dead’ is highly entertaining and well told, but the reader might be left thinking it could have been something more.