cover image The Nightmare File

The Nightmare File

Jack Livingston. St. Martin's Press, $15.95 (295pp) ISBN 978-0-312-57332-4

The third novel featuring the deaf private eye, Joe Binney, will win raves like those that greeted Livingston's Die Again Macready and A Piece of the Silence. Binney describes events after he agrees to help Evie Listing investigate her husband Gene's sudden death. The victim looks as if he had died of fear, with an expression on his face that bears a striking similarity to the astonished visages of certain Asian tribesmen, now refugees in the U.S., who seem to have expired in the middle of nightmares. Backtracking Gene Listing's last days, Binney learns that his company had been taken over by a corporation that sought to compel the employees' adherence to rigid rules, even in their private lives. The assignment brings Binney into an affair with Listing's lovely sister who is later found in his apartment, dead of a heroin injection. The detective feels as if he's trapped in a maze, fighting unseen as well as unheard enemies right up to the smash climax of this fearful, ironically humorous and altogether flawless novel. (August 29)