Killer Dreams
Title: Killer Dreams
Author: Iris Johansen
List price: $26.00
Amazon price: $18.98
The back cover of the paperback version of this thriller titillates and teases the prospective reader: „As one of the nation’s top sleep therapists, Sophie knows how dreams can kill. She specializes in the life-threatening night terrors that her son suffers from – but even his worst nightmares don’t compare with the all-too-real terror that’s about to begin.“ And, indeed, the realm where the various intertwined lives of the novel bump up against each other violently is the world of sleep and dreams.
The pivotal character of this novel is, indeed, Sophie Dunston, sleep researcher, divorced, a single parent. She helped develop a process to „chemically induce the subject to immediately go to REM-4, the most psychologically active level of sleep. While in that state, it was also possible to give suggestions to encourage pleasant dreams instead of night terrors, even to rid the subject of insomnia.“ But the lab was „using the vulnerability that the drug induced to develop mind control.“ This drug was adminstered with cruel, evil and disastrous results by Sophie’s unscrupulous boss to various people, including Sophie’s father.
As the story opens, Sophie is deeply wounded. She is consumed by Guilt, she wants to exact revenge upon the head honcho of the lab she worked for who put her sleep research to bad use. She has great difficulty in trusting anyone other than her son. She operates so as to control as much of her world as she can. She is even capable of taking on the role of killer. The storyline action of the novel has to do with the forces of evil again entering her life and trying to take control of her and her life.
In the course of the story, Sophie finds herself in relationships with various characters who are are have been victims of night terrors. Johanson has one of these characters, Royd, offer a succinct description of night terrors as contrasted to nightmares: „It’s a nightmare. As you know, they usually take place during REM, rapid eye movement sleep, rather than NREM, deep sleep. So they come at the end of my sleep cycle instead of closer to the beginning. My body appears to be paralyzed so that I only twitch, not flail around, and I don’t scream out. I have an elevated heart rate but nothing like the ones accompanying night terror. I remember my nightmare perfectly, and that’s not common with night terror.‘ (pg. 143-144) It is made clear that night terrors have the potential of being fatal. In this book, the world of sleep and dreams is dark and ominous.
Sophie’s first interaction with night terrors occurred with her father’s struggle with these events. which impelled her to study sleep and dreams. „He had terrible dreams. … And he didn’t sleep much. I wanted very much to help him. So I started working on [sleep research].“ (pg. 108) But her research wound up leading to her father shooting his wife dead in front of Sophie and her son.
This event, in turn caused her ten-year-old son, Michael, to suffer from night terrors. Sophie is consumed with guilt about her role in this. She wants to protect him from the harms of the terrors. But Michael is a resilient fellow, and winds up helping his mother in her journey to wholeness.
On a bit more removed level, it turns out that her boss, Sanborne, an incarnation of greed and power-lusting evil, misused her drug in order to create a cadre of manipulable Perfect Killers. Two of this camp’s former inmates appear in Sophie’s life, ultimately to become her allies against Sanborne.
First, there is Jock Gavin, who has been her roommate and guardian angel since her father’s murderous rampage. His will power was strong enough to overcome the impact of REM4 that had been administered to him and bolt Sanborne. He has known the worst of the REM4 nightmare and transformed its darkness into light.
Secondly, there is Matt Royd, who also possesses the strength of will and mind to have freed himself from the enslavement of REM4. He starts out as Sophie’s nemesis, but turns into her protector and lover. He wants to put an end to Sanborne’s dastardly activities and minfully employs his nightmares as a motivating force „He still had nightmares that he refused to give up because it kept the hatred white-hot.“ (pg. 182) In the course of the story, he moves from ruthless killer to a man of caring. He also embodies animal physicality and lust, which powers Sophie cannot resist, to her own betterment and emancipation.
These are males in Sophie’s life for whom she has caused deep pain for via the world of sleep and dreams. The fast-action story is ultimately about her redeeming herself (via murder, which does present certain ethical issues, if we look beyond White Hats giving cummepance to Black Hats), finding her wholeness. The female ensnared by be worst of rational masculinity reclaims a stronger wholeness.
As befits the genre, the characters are drawn with not particularly nuanced strokes, their interactions are black and white. The Good Guys, are all tough as nails and wise-cracking. They all have known Deep Pain, are guarded, but are ultimately guided by their Hearts of Gold toward a Happy Ending.
The novel starts out with the territory of sleep dreams being a realm of evil and danger. It is a world of sleep terrors and nightmates, as well as of waking life terrors and nightmares. Sophie’s following of her dream of engineering control of night terrors, not reality-checked in the waking world, has led to ghastly waking life nightmares. She confronts her demons, and some of them become her allies, others are eliminated, allowing Sophie to shape a new sense of self and inner wholeness. She confronts the ramifications of her naivete, integrating the shadow aspect of her life, and is ready for a sexy and happy Life Ever After.
This novel is a quick read, a fast-paced entertainment. Although it takes place in an environment that deals with dreams and nightmares, it lacks the depth and breadth that is a hallmark of the dream world. But the novel is a quest for healing and wholeness, which can be seen as a goal of Dreamfulness. What makes the novel such a fast read, its dealing in stereotypes of good and evil, belies the patience and nuanced attention that real-world Dreamfulness requires.