Mark Genevich lives in South Boston in a small apartment over a small storefront that he calls his office. He does mostly grunt work searching data bases to find lost addresses and researching genealogies; Mark owes his livelihood to the fact that his mother Ellen keeps him solvent.

Mark is surprised when a young woman whom he recognizes as a contestant from a TV reality show wants to employ him. Unfortunately, in the middle of the interview he suffers a narcoleptic episode and can’t remember much about his assignment. He does have an envelope containing several revealing photographs of a young woman who resembles his client, Jennifer Times.

He concludes he needs more information from Jennifer, but the doodles from his notepad reveal no contact information beyond the words South Shore Plaza where he assumes Jennifer is scheduled to make a mall appearance.

Mark’s mother, Ellen has had a successful career as a photographer and antique dealer, the former occupation being inherited from Mark’s father Tim who died when Mark was a young boy. Mark remembers little of his father other than excursions to the backyard to clean up dog poop, but his mother has a record of the man through his photographs. One of her favorites is a shot of Tim with his two best friends, Billy Times (who happens to be Jennifer’s father) and Brendan Sullivan. All too soon Sullivan ends up dead in what police are labeling a suicide.

Mark feels all of these apparently disparate events are related through his father. Since he has little knowledge of the man he will have to trace his activities through the photographic records. He has obviously gotten too close to something someone wants left undiscovered. His office and apartment are ransacked but he has no clue what his pursuers are looking for.

This novel comes together well through the skill of the author. It would be easy to make a comedic story of a bumbling detective who can’t stay awake long enough to make sense of the meager clues he possesses. Tremblay, however, reveals that narcolepsy is a complex condition not just nodding off at inappropriate intervals. It can manifest itself in three distinct forms, the nodding off, a hallucinogenic state in which the sufferer imagines things happening that have, in fact, not happened and a catatonic state in which the patient is aware of his surroundings and his mind is clear but he is totally unable to move any of the voluntary muscles in his body. Using these three conditions Tremblay builds a clever little mystery.

In addition to a tightly woven plot, the author is a master of description. The narrative is told in the first person by Mark Genevich. The words chosen to detail the destruction of Mark’s office and apartment dramatically convey how much these spaces and their contents mean to the detective, sparse and unpretentious though they may be. The items which are destroyed are described as if they were animate objects that have feelings and emotions.

It is easy to feel empathetic toward Mark. He doesn’t use his narcolepsy as a crutch but it sure makes life more challenging for him. He cannot believe everything that he remembers to be the truth, and of course, he needs to rely on public transportation as a narcoleptic episode while driving could be catastrophic. How he maneuvers himself around takes some imagination especially when he suspects he is being followed.

The Little Sleep is a short compact novel with all the loose ends firmly secured in the end. From the information on the back cover, the author is working on another book with the same protagonist. I meet this fact with mixed emotions. I really enjoyed this novel and would be hard pressed to imagine anything as a sequel that would measure up, but Mark is a likeable guy that I would like to know even better. .

--Andy Plonka