Murdered Sleep: A Dave Strickland Mystery

The second Dave Strickland mystery, after the Shamus-winning Suffer the Little Children , finds the San Jose, Calif., PI struggling like Job with memories of emotional trauma and loss of faith. While visiting the graves of his young wife, a suicide, and baby daughter, a victim of crib death, Strickland sees a young girl being assaulted by a man in a poncho. Intervening, the PI is pushed over a cliff and sustains severe head injuries. In intensive care, Strickland dreams repeatedly of his now dead sister, whom he was unable to save from a crippling fall down the basement stairs when they were children.Then grateful aunt of 11-year-old Becky, who has raised the girl since her mother's death six years earlier, invites Strickland to recuperate at their beach house. There the PI is further troubled by dreams and panic attacks that resemble those that plague Becky, who has long been under psychiatric care. Lengthy descriptions of nightmares, anxiety attacks and therapy sessions have an authentic ring, but they often slow the narrative's pace to a crawl. Strickland makes a fairly facile deduction that leads to a cliff-edge climax and a solution of the present crimes and some promise of peace for Strickland. (Mar.)