Dead Before I Wake

By Malachi Stone

Attorney Bosco Hoel suffers from a weird sleep disturbance. His lawyer-wife Brenda is tired of being beat up in bed every night while he's asleep. She forces him to treatment for his disorder at a clinic where the hotshot doctor in charge experiments on him with a device that records his nightmares on DVD. In his dreams Bosco is brutally murdering women and desecrating their corpses. One's body is immolated, another has a Z carved in her abdomen. Trouble is, these murders in Bosco's subconscious have a nasty way of coming true.

Bosco's beautiful wife suffers devastating injuries in a car crash and loses her right leg. While she's in the hospital the murders continue. Brenda's former husband, law professor Lance Dowd Sr., takes advantage of Brenda's injuries to threaten her with the loss of the mansion she was awarded in their divorce.

Sheriff Skip Hopp and his men are harassing Brenda's adult son Lanny, who had been dating the first murder victim and had just broken up with her the night she was killed. Lanny appears to be the last one to have seen her alive. Lanny hires Bosco as his defense attorney. Bosco manages to back off the sheriff for the time being, but Lanny lets slip one or two intriguing clues that he may in fact be guilty of the crimes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Malachi Stone
• Release date: Aug 12, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370301874

Malachi Stone

Marlon Brando on Larry King Live quoted an unknown Louisiana woman who said, "Anybody who shows his face in public is an ass." (1) Mindful of those wise words, I created the pseudonym Malachi Stone to author my novels and short stories because, as a practicing attorney in a conservative community, my natural inclination was and still is to avoid notoriety and controversy wherever and whenever possible. That being said, my secret identity affords me a perverse Zorro-like gratification. I've been writing for more than twenty years. For a three-year period I was represented by a fine literary agent (2) in Manhattan, who tried valiantly but without success to place my novels in traditional publishing. Allegedly, objections were raised to negative protagonists and explicit sex. While I am convinced those objections are groundless, I am weary of arguing the point. I'll simply let you, the readers, decide for yourselves. I have garnered many good reviews over the years. See, for example, Elizabeth White (3). Interviews of me may be found on the web, for instance, Steve Weddle, Fiona "McDroll" Johnson, Paul D. Brazill and Ian Ayres (4-7). Please feel free to post reviews of my work, good, bad, or indifferent. Only be sure to remember that most of my books, especially the later ones, are self-published without the dubious benefit of copyediting, content editing or censorship of any kind. So if you post reviews carping about bad language or finding flaws in punctuation, paragraphing or font, I frankly don't care. I'm putting these books out there for the sole reason I wrote them in the first place - to be enjoyed by readers. As my law practice has become more active recently, I have taken a sabbatical from writing but hope to resume soon. My personal and private email is: [e-mail]. I'd be delighted to hear from you!1. http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0308/02/lklw.00.html2. http://variety.com/exec/stacia-decker/3. http://www.elizabethawhite.com/tag/malachi-stone/4. http://www.spinetinglermag.com/2011/04/20/conversations-with-the-bookless-malachi-stone/5. http://imeanttoreadthat.blogspot.com/2012/01/american-banshee-by-malachi-stone.html#!/2012/01/american-banshee-by-malachi-stone.html6. https://pauldbrazill.com/2012/01/19/short-sharp-interview-malachi-stone/7. http://nigelpbird.blogspot.com/2010/09/dancing-with-myself-malachi-stone.html