Death Never Sleeps

Alex Nicholas was a bookie. As a bookie you make a lot of enemies. So it was of no real surprise when Alex was killed. However Alex is not dead. In fact he sends messages to his brother, Michael. At first Michael can not believe that Alex is talking to him but than he realizes just what Alex was truely up to. Now he must protect Alex or find himself killed just like his brother.

If this book had not been sent to me to review as part of a blog tour than I would never have known about it and that would have been a shame. This book had me hooked. I have been introduced to a new author that I will be keeping an eye on. The pacing of the story was fast, kept me entertained, and I liked the characters. If I had to classify this book I would say it was a techo-thriller.

While this book is fiction there are aspects in it that I could see actually happening in real life. We as a technology age could and might already be working on ways to keep someone alive through computers. If you are looking for a new author to read or just something new to read in general than you need to check out Death Never Sleeps. You won't sleep while reading this book!

DEATH NEVER SLEEPS

By E.J. Simon

 

                          Do the Dead Have Smartphones?        

 

It’s Halloween night in Queens, N.Y. Alex Nicholas, flamboyant bookie and loan shark, is enjoying his favorite meal at his favorite restaurant with his favorite woman who is not his wife. Sated with veal parmigiana and Chivas Regal, he dials his brother Michael’s number. He has a very important secret to tell him. Then he sees the skinny kid with the gun. In his last seconds before a bullet ends his life, Alex tells himself: Michael was smart; he would figure it all out.

 

Alex and Michael were as different as two brothers could be. Alex, once on track to become a star baseball player, instead became very successful in a collection of illegal businesses. He’d married three gorgeous women, divorced two, kept multiple mistresses, and had friends who carried guns. His brother Michael was living the high end of The American Dream. He was a straight-arrow, squeaky-clean CEO of a financial management company, with one beautiful wife, a daughter in college and a million-dollar Colonial in Connecticut.

 

As Michael sits in the crowded church at his brother’s funeral, the pews fill with family, shady business associates and beautiful women. Suddenly, Michael is distracted by a mysterious message in his Blackberry’s inbox: It’s a photo of Alex sitting behind his desk, and the words, “Life is a dream, and death is waking up.”

 

At Alex’s wake, Michael is shocked to learn that his own family is in danger. Alex died owing big money to cold-blooded mobsters who will stop at nothing to collect their debts. Their idea of negotiating was a gun below a table, aimed below the belt. Within hours, Michael is drawn into the search for the millions of dollars Alex’s widow is sure Alex had stashed away.

 

Michael gets another message while he’s standing by Alex’s grave: “What are you doing here?” The pieces start to come together when Skinny Lester, Alex’s right-hand man, tells Michael that just before his death, Alex had installed some very specialized software on his hidden laptop: a program that would allow him to live forever.

 

Things are never quite what they seem in this page-turning romp through exclusive hotels and expensive restaurants with beautiful, desperate women, tough-guy thugs, cynical cops and devious wiseguys. As Michael crosses the globe to find the people behind his brother’s murder, the bodies start to fall, and the lines between life, death, the spirit, and the Internet blur.

 

How can Michael avoid his brother’s fate? Just how far beyond death can Alex reach out to help him?

 

 

E.J. SIMON was CEO of GMAC Global Relocation Services and the Managing Director of Douglas Elliman, the largest real estate company in New York.  He is a consultant to many leading private equity firms and has held senior level positions at prominent financial services companies. He is a world traveler, food enthusiast and lives in Connecticut. DEATH NEVER SLEEPS is his first novel.

 

DEATH NEVER SLEEPS

By E.J. Simon

iUniverse: September 1, 2013

$21.95 Print: $3.99 E-book: 377 pages