The Second Sleep

Starred review from September 2, 2019
Thriller Award–winner Harris (Munich) does a masterly job playing with readers’ expectations in this mystery set in 15th-century England. Fr. Christopher Fairfax has been dispatched by his bishop to Wessex to officiate at the funeral of Fr. Thomas Lacy, a parish priest who died in a fall. The assignment seems routine enough, but on reaching the town of Addicott St. George, he finds unexpected questions to answer. When he visits Lacy’s library, he learns that the man he’s about to inter in consecrated ground possessed numerous heretical volumes relating to an antiquarian society proscribed by the church. Eager to keep things uncomplicated, Fairfax proceeds with the funeral service as if he’d never seen the books, only to have the rites disrupted by an attendee who yells that Lacy’s death was not the result of “evil chance.” When foul weather delays Fairfax’s departure, he finds even more oddities, including the disappearance of the church register and an unsettling letter by a Cambridge professor found in a mass grave, which supports his suspicion that Lacy’s interest in the past was more than innocent scholarly curiosity. Few readers will pick up on the fairly planted clues. This is a clever complement to Harris’s debut mystery, Fatherland. 75,000-copy announced first printing. Agent: Michael Carlisle, Inkwell Management.

Best known for his animated narration of DON QUIXOTE and other essential classics, Roy McMillan is one of our most versatile and accomplished voices, equally effective narrating a popular thriller. The author of FATHERLAND always keeps listeners on their toes, and here a pastiche of elements--a dystopian world, a possible murder mystery, the high action of a thriller--results in a unique genre-bending story that slowly reveals itself in the unexpected ways that delight Harris's fans. McMillan delivers the kind of steady, finely nuanced performance essential to a good suspense story, in which the narrative tension derives from the calculated withholding and unfolding of detail. Expertly written and expertly performed, this top-notch entertainment finds both author and narrator at the top of their form. D.A.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award � AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine