FALLING AWAKE

Extreme dreams.

More formula fiction from the bestselling Krentz (Truth or Dare, 2004, etc), this featuring an undercover op in sexy sunglasses and a beautiful dreamer with a bad-tempered cat. When his former colleague turns up dead, Ellis Cutler just has to take off those “obsidian-tinted” shades and check out the Belvedere Center for Sleep Research—not to mention Isabel Wright, a researcher of Level 5 Lucid Dreaming. Seems like there could be a connection to Frey-Salter, the corporate front for the hush-hush government agency where he and Katherine Ralston used to work. Ellis’s intuition (never mind clues, never mind evidence) tells him that his quarry, bad guy Vincent Scargill, killed Katherine. Ellis, however, doesn’t understand why he didn’t see it coming. He’s a Level 5 Lucid Dreamer himself, and it seems that Isabel is too. In fact, she’s been hanging around inside his subconscious for quite a while, under an assumed name (Tango Dancer). Isabel, a former phone psychic, has finally, with no apparent qualifications whatsoever, obtained “a professional-level position with excellent salary and benefits” plus a lackluster alternative love interest in Ken Payne, fellow researcher. Should she risk all that for a sexy loner like Ellis? Hell, yes. This is a Jayne Ann Krentz novel. So, back to the plot: Isabel fills Cutler in on the dark doings that have shadowed Belvedere research. Is Dr. Maureen Sage really someone else who used to work at Frey-Salter, and why haven’t any of these supposedly psychic characters recognized her? Are the villains trying to get their hands on a top-secret drug that intensifies dreaming? Better pop a No-Doz, because this ho-hum thriller is padded with a lot of tedious analysis of dreams, tarted up in pseudo-shrinkese. What is the significance of the red tsunami? And how about that rollercoaster? What does it all mean?

For the fans.