Waking with Enemies

June 4, 2007
Picking up where Sleeping with Strangers
left off, Dickey's latest novel finds hit man Gideon in London, where another assassin, a mysterious man with a broken nose, is hot on his trail. Gideon's most recent target was a rapper, Big Bad Wolf. The rival rapper who hired Gideon for the hit, Sledge, was recently assassinated, and Gideon assumes he is the latest target. The nonstop narrative follows Gideon as he evades the assassin, searches for the truth about his hooker mother, continues his involvement with tough girl Arizona (who wants Gideon to kill her older sister), tries to figure out who ordered the hit on him and finds time for some explicitly chronicled fantasy sex. Though the revelations about who's behind what are a stretch and the ending is a little too much on the rosy side, there's a lot of fun to be had in watching Gideon work his brutal trade, and the high-octane narrative will have readers burning through page after page.

July 1, 2007
Offering another breakneck read with an exciting plot and alluring European locales, this sequel to Dickey's "Sleeping with Enemies" opens with sexy hitman Gideon in London confronting his own mortality when he becomes the target of an attempted hit. In addition, Gideon also resolves his inner turmoil when he realizes that people in his past were not exactly whom he believed them to be. Although his love triangle and quadrangles are quite unconventional, Gideon eventually finds a love that seems to satisfy his long search for normalcy. Although the plot at times is quite implausible, Dickey's second thriller (after numerous popular hits like "Cheaters") is a solid, entertaining read. Recommended for libraries with contemporary African American fiction collections. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 4/1/07.]Lisa Jones, North Birmingham Regional Branch, Birmingham P.L., AL

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