Last weekend my son sent me to bed and told me to sleep well. I motioned to the book in hand and said I would sleep when I'm dead. He replied with "so, you'll sleep when you've read?" and it stuck.
It's pretty much how it works -- especially on weekends.
I don't have to work and I generally don't fall asleep easily (part of the curse of working third shift the rest of the week). I generally read myself to sleep. Sometimes excessively. Sometimes it only takes a paragraph and I'm out like a light. Sometimes it takes a lot more.
I've probably already finished whatever I posted for Book Beginnings/Friday56, and quite often for Tuesday Intros/Teaser Tuesday. I'm back to doing WWW Wednesdays to try and stagger things out some, but that's not really a rambley linkup (though it probably will be for me from time to time). That still leaves me the entire weekend ... so I'm linking up to myself with my new "I'll Sleep When I've Read" feature. It may not happen every Sunday ... but it probably will.
If you want to share whatever has kept you up past your bedtime because you just needed one more chapter ... or the entire book ... please comment! My TBR pile is already toppling, but I can always add more.
I mentioned in my
WWW Wednesday post that one of the books I was considering diving into next was Robert Bryndza's
Nine Elms -- the first in his Kate Marshall series. The third is sitting on my NetGalley shelf and the first two are available via Kindle Unlimited so I took it as a sign. I started reading Thursday morning after I got home from work when I should have been sleeping. Normally that's an okay time to read a little. I'm typically exhausted from work and can
maybe get through a chapter before I pass out. I turned off my Kindle at Chapter 8 and decided that some books are better left for weekends.
I finished it last night. Well, technically, in the wee small hours of this morning.
Way past my bedtime.
The story starts in the autumn on 1995. Two years prior a serial killer began targeting teenage girls in the Nine Elms area of London by the Thames. The press gave the killer the name Nine Elms Cannibal since bite marks were found on each victim and "nothing sold newspapers more than a cannibal on the loose."
This is when I was hooked.
Detective Constable Kate Marshall was assigned to the team working the case and when she's targeted as the next victim, she survives and solves the case. Unfortunately, rather than skyrocketing her career, everything falls apart. I won't tell you why or how.
Spoilers and all that.
Fifteen years later, Kate is trying to cope and deal and is now a criminology professor. This is something that she cannot put behind her, and not just because the case comes up in her lectures.
Again, spoilers.
Sorry.
But I'm not.
It doesn't help matters at all when the parents of a girl who went missing twenty years ago reach out to Kate for help. It really doesn't help when a "fan" of the Nine Elms Cannibal appears and the horrors begin all over again. Kate might not be a police officer anymore, but she still gets involved with the help of her friends and colleagues -- particularly Tristan, her assistant at the university, and Alan, a forensic pathologist.
The telling of the story jumps around between characters and locations. Mostly Kate, but also Tristan, Alan, the original Nine Elms Cannibal, his terrifying mother, "the fan" ... and the victims. It never gets confusing, and it never loses its pace ... or its grip. From some authors it would probably end up a jumbled mess. From Bryndza it ends up a thrilling page-turner that you cannot bring yourself to put down -- even if it is way past your bedtime.
I'm glad that I already have the next two Kate Marshall books waiting for another night off. I might miss out on some more shut-eye because of them but, after all, I'll sleep when I've read ...
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