Really interesting premise, a PI with narcolepsy, feel like I've learnt quite a bit here. Clues and the past are revealed in a timely fashion. Not my favourite though I will be honest. Two perfectly average stories that in an omnibus make the reading way too long.

Thanks to NetGalley, Paul Tremblay and Titan Books for an eArc copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

These are the debut noir style novels by Paul Tremblay, I'm a big fan of his horror works so was intrigued to see how a different genre would play out.

Private Detective Geneviche takes unreliable narrators to a whole new level. Suffering from narcolepsy it's virtually impossible to know what's really happening and what is only a lucid dream. There's no real way to mark the passing of time as what Geneviche thinks was a blink could actually have been an hour long nap.
Whilst I appreciated such a unique plot device it made the novel more difficult to get into.
Geneviche is a bleak character and quite heavy on the self pity and whilst that's realistic for a man with his condition it's not very endearing so I didnt much care for him or what might happen to him- This took away some of the tension for me as the reader, whenever he found himself in a dangerous situation I wasn't overly concerned.

The relationship between Geneviche and his mother, whom he only refers to as Ellen, is an odd one. They behave in a considerate but removed manner that lacked any real emotional connection. A recurrent childhood dream Geneviche has of his deceased father had the same vibe, not particularly emotional and without any connection.

The mystery itself of what 'it' is that Geneviche has been tasked to find and who really set him on the case to start with is intriguing, the characters involved and the truth he discovers is dark and disturbing but ultimately left me disappointed.

For these reasons I only read The Little Sleep and likely won't return to the remainder of this omnibus to read No Sleep Til Wonderland.
Instead I will continue to devour Tremblay's horror novels- they're more my style.

In The Little Sleep, we meet Mark Genevich, a narcoleptic PI, hired to identify a woman in a set of photos. The woman looks a lot like a particular reality TV star, who also happens to be the DA’s daughter. But Mark can’t remember who hired him, and he tries to uncover the truth while also reckoning with his memories of his father, battling with a body that can fall asleep at any moment.

In No Sleep Till Wonderland, Genevich starts group therapy. A new friend, Gus, seems determined to help Mark, and hires him to watch over a friend. But Mark ends up falling into something deep, and once more finds himself in a situation where reality and dreams crash, and he has to untangle everything.

These are reprinted versions of Paul Tremblay’s debut crime noir novels. I requested them as I absolutely loved Survivor Song, and though crime is a genre I rarely dip into, when I do I tend to enjoy it. However, after reading these, maybe ‘noir’ as such isn’t really totally for me? I’m not sure how much in common these have with other noir books, but for me, a lot of what made The Little Sleep an enjoyable read felt a bit tedious during the second.

But for a moment, let’s talk about character. Mark Genevich is a unique character. His narcolepsy means he’s not always totally aware of what is happening, and this creates some strange situations, especially for a PI. The first part of The Little Sleep is dedicated to Mark trying to establish who hired him, and the events escalate from there. In the sequel, Mark rescues a young boy from a fire, but can’t even be sure he did that, as the boy is pulled out of the building by one of the neighbours. He ends up caught in situations he can’t control, but throughout it all his voice remains strong, and Mark at times shows himself to be witty and occasionally smart. He views the world through a lens of fantasy, almost giving into the absurdity of dreams even when he’s fully awake.

By the time we get into No Sleep Till Wonderland, the constant metaphors and similes become grating. They work in some places, fall flat in others, and at points make it just a little difficult to actually tell what’s going on. Again, some places where that is in the story’s favour, and others where it just isn’t.

However, Tremblay’s writing talent is really on show here, and some of Mark’s observations are great uses of dark humour. There’s also a nice blending of the real/unreal when Mark is under huge stress, and the landscape seems to physically change around him. Some of the more ‘noir’ type tropes do land a little flat for me. Some of the women serve little purpose and shift into being more stereotype than not, but I know from Survivor Song that Tremblay does write women well, so I’d chalk that up to being more of an early work thing.

I enjoyed reading both books, but am glad I took a (short) break between the first and second before carrying on. However, by the end of No Sleep Till Wonderland, I was wishing things would maybe hurry up just a little – it felt like it had just maybe too many players crammed in, so wasn’t always easy to follow who was who. But as I said at the start, I’m not a huge crime person and ‘noir’, it seems, is a little not my thing, so if you do like noir or maybe are a Tremblay fan who hasn’t managed to read this yet, it’s worth a go.

Genre is a artificial structure we love to give stories to help us link stories to other stories. Have a murder to solve you may yourself in crime, aliens enter your chapter you’re in SF but please don’t ask if Aliens is a horror move despite it being set in space. I think it is a very wide field and any attempt to limit what you can do in one should be fought. It is like taking a familiar song and really really re-working it like a jazz or blues tune. How much can you make it your own and when do you need to stop before it gets unworkable. In The Little Sleep and NO Sleep Til Wonderland omnibus by Paul Tremblay a fascinating idea gets played in two novels taking noir and pushing into a David Lynch style trip through crime.

Mark Genevich had a terrible car accident that didn’t just give him severe facial injuries he hides behind his beard but narcolepsy. From little sleeps to big sleep and paralysis each day leads to a strange ever tired trip through life he occupies with chainsmoking. He has become a private detective usually reliant on online only investigations but gets startled when minor reality TV star Jennifer Times asks him to find some photos that appear to be of her in comprising positions, he gets into a weird trip that involves Jennifer’s father a powerful DA, his deceased father and a TV star that denies now all knowledge of talking to him. Can Mark trust himself?

A narcoleptic detective sounds like a comedy sketch but Tremblay makes this work by making Mark’s voice quite compelling. IN some ways the traditional noir wisecracking detective that we know and love in thriller but adds a lot of vulnerability which is refreshing; Mark is readily suspecting he is out of his depth, scared and thinks his behaviour will end relationships with his suffering mother and very few remaining friends. He is likeable and more underdog than confident white knight.

The other hook to the tales is more modern and that is Tremblay adds in the unusual aspects of narcolepsy that mean Mark gets very real dreams and that sometimes what he sees is not what anyone else sees. This moves the story into unreliable narrator territory so very quickly we as readers have to carefully study scenes and are they real or a sub-concious that is putting a noir style This has pluses and minuses. For the first tale it’s refreshing and gives the story an edge as we try to work out what is going on and it takes noir on occasion into strange horror territory as the reality we have when reading can’t be trusted. The first story takes a standard noir plot and it’s the delivery that really works although you may find you can guess the suspect and the crime very quickly. The second tale tough for me shows the limitations of the character and soon you’re questioning if anything you are told is real – there isn’t quite enough to make the formula last long. I did how like that eventually Tremblay even makes you take a second look at Mark himself which adds a further level of reality to be questioned.

They’re a bold duology and I really like the early glimpses of a writer we know now more for horror and you can see glimpses of his later work in the tale – reality, how story can be played with etc that make it an entertaining read but I do think after two novels I’d seen enough. Perhaps more a curate’s egg but a great example of how you can play with a format and do something familiar but very different.

Welcome to the postmodernist world of Paul Tremblay with this delicious omnibus edition introducing the greatest narcoleptic detective on Earth, Mark Genovich. To be quite honest I had only a really faint idea of what narcolepsy was when I started reading The little sleep. At first, I wasn't too surprised when Genovich started to get on my nerves for being a very unreliable narrator. I simply needed to understand his medical condition in order to follow his story. So I fastened my seat belt, kept on moving ahead and lo and behold it eventually clicked after a few chapters: Genovich's Bostonian adventures hooked me and kept me wide awake. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary in these two classically well plotted whodunits full of verbal pyrotechnics and run of the mill characters except the main protagonist's medical condition. It's simply grows on you so much that you will end up feeling trapped inside Genovich's body: you will struggle to walk, to think, to move, to eat, to talk...etc. while following his every move....It was a surreal fictional experience following such a razor sharp mind fully cognizant of the potential dangers that could be unleashed at anytime upon its body by an uncontrolled medical foe! It was unnerving, exhausting but so rewarding by the end👍👍
Lastly, I was a bit wary of all the pundits' praises that compared Paul Tremblay's foray into crime fiction with Chandler's Big sleep because however unpleasant it might seem to Raymond's lovers, his big snooze remains to me and to this day, the most soporific mystery yarn I have ever had the great displeasure to waste time reading (let's not even touch the movie....) but rest assured that with The little sleep and No sleep till wonderland you will feel everything except the need to fall asleep! It will definitely keep wide awake!!

Many thanks to Netgalley and Titan Books for the ARC and the opportunity to travel into the marvellous world of Mark Genovich's.

Thanks NetGalley and the publisher for the digital copy in exchange for an honest review.

Actual rating: 2.5

Set in Boston, this book series is about Mark Genevich, who is a private investigator and has narcolepsy. This edition combines the two books.

The first book's case is about Jennifer Times - rich and famous - who shows up one day asking for him to find the person who stole her fingers (pretty normal, right?)

The second book's "case" is about him doing a favor for Gus - an acquaintance - who askis him to protect a friend who's being stalked, but things get a little more complicated when he gets involved in a murder case and even becomes a suspect.

I have read other books by him, so I was already expecting to enjoy, but not love them and it was exatcly what happened.

I like his writing. It's very straightforward and objective, but it becomes a little more subjective when it needs to be, especially in these books in which the protagonist has this condition where it makes really difficult for him to distinguish dreams from reality (which is a big deal for a P.I.).

I enjoy the author's humor and the protagonist quirkness as well. The cases were gripping but not that gripping that would make not let go of them. I think they are good mystery book, but there are better ones out there.