Want a ghost story/crime story/police procedural/Shakespeare lesson all twisted — really twisted — into one page-turner? See The Sleeping and the Dead (Minotaur Books/St. Martin’s Press) from local author Jeff Crook. See to it too that you’ve got the stomach for it, preferably of the cast-iron variety. The story’s got scenes that are plenty perverse and scenes to serve as a road map to Memphis’ leading theaters, where a lot of the bloodshed is staged. It’s also got former MPD vice detective Jackie Lyons in the lead role with a camera that sees ghosts and with a real mess on her hands. Not the least of it: a nasty drug habit she’s maybe kicked and a nastier serial killer making mincemeat of his victims.
Here’s Jeff Crook, by phone and by email, on The Sleeping and the Dead and on the path to winning an agent and a publishing contract, with side steps into the martial arts and the writer’s mean rack of ribs:
