Spoilers!
I love me some Greg Isles because his books, even if I’m not always feeling the contours of the story or the characters, have such propulsion, I end up devouring them in a few manic reading sessions. That was the case with his 2002 standalone-ish book, Sleep No More. The reason I added the “ish” is because it does feature his long-running series character, Penn Cage, and like that character, is also set in Natchez, Mississippi. In fact, I thought Cage was going to be a mere cameo appearance and instead, he factors greatly into the second half of the book. I read my first Cage book, his introduction, 1999’s The Quiet Game, last year. While I have nothing against paranormal books or books “outside the box” — which is literally how Isles’ website lists this book and The Footprints of God, which I read earlier this year — I think what made me hope Sleep No More would not veer into paranormal is doing so seemed incongruous with the Cage/Natchez connections. In other words, Cage’s story was so grounded in reality, brutal historic reality, that I didn’t think it would make sense to say that within Cage’s grounded universe, the paranormal is possible. Nonetheless, as I said, I still devoured the book partly because Isles is such a great writer and partly because I was hoping I (and Cage!) would be right that the story didn’t have a paranormal explanation. Ope.
Set in 2002, John Waters is a geologist, who started his own oil business with his longtime friend, Cole Smith, in his hometown of Natchez. Waters takes after his geologist father and in a sense, returned home to continue his late father’s legacy. Indeed, he’s the wunderkind, who can find the right place to drill oil and strike it rich. At least, sometimes, if fate doesn’t intervene. Waters is married to Lily and has a seven-year-old daughter. For his part, Cole is married, but a womanizer, an alcoholic, and a drunk. But he’s also the Don King of selling oil to investors, and more importantly to Waters, a loyal friend, especially when Waters’ dad died. Regardless of friendship though, I’d be nervous doing business with someone with any of Cole’s problems, much less all of them.
That said, Waters and Lily’s life isn’t as rosy as it seems. After their daughter’s birth, they tried to have children two more times. Each time, Lily miscarried. In the four years since, Lily hasn’t shown much affection or sexual interest in Waters. Waters has allowed himself to grow imbittered about it. So much so, that when the sexy real estate agent Eve, known for sleeping around with married men, enters his life, it’s inevitable that Waters will have an affair with her. It’s the worst when you’re reading a book from a protagonist’s perspective and you know they’re going to do the wrong thing, but you’re still hoping they won’t. Waters does the wrong thing and then doesn’t even feel guilty about it because he’s rationalized it in his brain that he deserves this due to Lily’s coldness toward him. Ugh. (Worse still, later, when Lily learns of his extramarital affair, she will say she was equally to blame! No!)
The reason Eve was also tempting, apparently, is because she reminded Waters of a previous lover of his — who he also had an affair with! — named Mallory, who turned out to be a jealous, psycho woman who tried to kill him twice, as well as a subsequent girlfriend he had. She was raped and murdered 10 years ago, though. What’s odd is that despite the jealous, violent side of Mallory, Waters was drawn to Eve because of the lustful memories he had of her. Okay then. But it only gets odder from here.
After they have sex, Eve reveals that she is Mallory. That when she was raped and killed, her consciousness or her soul or whatever you want to call it, transferred into the man who killed her. From there, over the past 10 years, she hopped from one person to the next to find her way back to Waters to have him once again. She’s obsessed with having him. Despite how absurd this story is, Waters continues to have aggressive sex with her over the next two weeks. The last night of their affair, while they’re both climaxing — that’s the way the soul transfers, apparently, analogized by Waters to a sexually transmitted disease — Mallory transfers to Waters, who then kills the real Eve. Now, Waters is in a world of trouble after he wakes up, realizing what he did.
That’s where Cage enters the picture, as another of Waters’ longtime friends and a lawyer by trade, and tries to reason with Waters, who has come to believe that the transference must be taking place since Eve knew things only he and Mallory could know, that someone is trying to not only drive Waters insane with this sort of parlor trick, if you will, but frame him for murder with the money from his oil business as the ultimate motive. Cage figures Cole and Eve are working together or that even Lily is involved because maybe she also harbors resentment toward Waters, blaming him for the two miscarriages. Cage was my hope: yes! I don’t want it to be a paranormal explanation. But we were wrong. It was a paranormal story. And it only gets odder. Because Mallory transferred from Waters to … Lily. Mallory figured Waters would only ever be with her if she took over his wife. Waters is aghast at this, and his energies become two-fold even above and beyond staying out of jail for murder: a.) save his wife because Lily is still in there, and b.) find a way to stop Mallory.
After Waters is able to convince Mallory to leave Lily — she transfers to Cole — on the pretense of transferring to their office secretary, who Cole was sleeping with, of course, because she’d be a more fertile body for Mallory than Lily (she wants children by Waters), Waters shares all that he knows with Lily to convince her that this paranormal transference is occurring. She believes him and the two of them conspire to kill Cole and/or the secretary once Mallory transfers to her. At this point, I’m thinking it still could come back around to a grounded story, with Lily as the ultimate Machiavellian maestro behind it all. Because she’s the one compelling Waters to kill Cole and/or the secretary to “stop Mallory”! But no, it’s still paranormal. That was my last hope. Mallory learns of their plot and thwarts it, and besides, Waters couldn’t go through with killing the secretary.
That’s when Lily thinks the best way to stop Mallory is to allow Mallory to come back into her body through transference from Cole (sex!) and then kill herself, thus, killing Mallory. She tries as much by driving her car off a bridge and into the water. But then, Lily realizes how much she wants to live and fights to survive. She miraculously does, and for the most part, seems to have “drowned” the consciousness, or soul, of Mallory.
Meanwhile, despite my protestations to stop talking to the police, Waters talks to the police, and is soon arrested for the murder of Eve. It seems inevitable that the DNA will come back tying him to Eve on the night of her murder. Instead, because of the transference of the souls altering Waters’ physiology, the DNA doesn’t match, and it’s insinuated that he’ll get off for killing Eve. All is right in Natchez again. Or is it?! Iles teases that Mallory is “swimming” back to Lily’s consciousness again.
This was a fun ride, even if I didn’t like Waters (he cheated and justified his cheating) and didn’t like the paranormal direction for all the reasons I stated. Isles is a thrilling writer no matter what he’s writing. But I’ll definitely be interested in getting back to the grounded Cage stories.
Milam's Musings 