The huge Dee Henderson fan that I am, I looked forward to the release of “Before I Wake” most anxiously and have been reading it every night before bed for the last week.
Rae Gabriella was a police officer before she joined the FBI. Bruce Chapel, her boyfriend, was sad to see her move to Washington DC in the course of her work, but he knew it would be good for her career. Eleven years have gone by since then, and Rae has resigned from the FBI due to a case gone terribly wrong. When Bruce contacts her and asks her to come be a partner in his private investigation firm, she decides it couldn’t hurt to go check it out. Bruce’s office is located in the small town of Justice. It does sound perfect.
Nathan Justice is the descendant of the founding fathers of Justice, and is also the sheriff. Up to his eyeballs with a union strike, he’s deeply tired and relies on his good friend Bruce to help him with some footwork on his most difficult cases. When Bruce’s old friend Rae shows up in town, Nathan finds her an ally as well, and the three of them start working together to bring things under control.
But when three women in town die, all apparently of natural causes, all over the same weekend, that raises some eyebrows. What are the odds of that? Two of the women were young and had merely stopped off in Justice for a short time. One was a life-long resident in her golden years. The coroner can’t find any cause of death, but when Rae nearly dies in her own hotel room, Nathan and Bruce are even more convinced that someone, or something, is behind this. A murderer? An environmental poison? A poisonous bug bite? Something is causing these deaths, and in the meantime, they have to keep a close eye on Rae to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
I didn’t enjoy this book quite as much as Dee’s others, although I still really liked it. She seems to have changed her writing style a little bit since writing the O’Malley series, and I don’t think that as a reader, I identify as much with this new style. But it’s still a great story, very compelling, very suspenseful. I liked it.
(This book was published in 2006 by Tyndale.)
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