Sleepless in Los Angeles

Despite his early books’ preoccupation with vampiric themes (which seem to be all the rage), if you haven’t heard of or read Charlie Huston (The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death), its probably because he hasn’t had a movie made from one of his books.

Huston, who is an exponentially more original writer than the bestselling genre writers who blurb his books, belongs with his very talented crime-story brethren Michael Connelly and George Pelecanos—which is to say that his genre-busting work is good and potent writing illuminating nifty and engaging stories.

His new tome Sleepless (Ballantine) is a dystopian nightmare set in July 2010 with at least 33 million (and growing) people infected with FFI (Fatal Familial Insomnia), which, as the name suggests, is death-inducing sleeplessness.

Philosophy Ph.D. Parker Hass has joined the LAPD on his moral imperative to make the world a better place, even as it disintegrates into chaos. He is assigned to be an undercover vice cop charged with tracking down and choking off the illicit trade in DR33M3R, also known as Dreamer, the only drug that provides relief (though death is not forestalled). And in his pursuit Park himself becomes the prey of an aging mercenary.

Meet that killer, as he is sitting in a L.A. traffic jam listening to Gonoud’s opera Faust in his air-conditioned Cadillac:

And, yes, the story gets better (and better).