The Sleeping and the Dead: A Mystery [Paperback]

Jackie Lyons, a former vice detective with the Memphis Police Department, is trying to put her life back together. Her husband has served her with divorce papers, she's broke, and her apartment has just gone up in flames. But a failed marriage, unemployment, and an incinerated home aren't her only problems: she also sees ghosts.

Since Jackie left her job with the MPD, she's been making ends meet by photographing crime scenes for her old friends on the force, and for the occasional collector. When she's called to the murder scene of the famed Memphis Playhouse Killer's latest victim, she starts seeing crime scenes from a different perspective-- her new camera captures spectral images. As her camera brings her ghostly visitors into sharper relief, it also points her toward clues the ex-detective in her won't let go: Did the man she just started dating kill his wife? Is the Playhouse Killer someone in her inner circle?

As Jackie works to separate natural from supernatural, friend from foe, and light from dark, the spirit world and her own difficult past become the only things she can depend on to solve the case.

The Sleeping and the Deadis a Jackie Lyons Mystery from Jeff Crook.

JEFF CROOK is a technical writer and editor for the U.S. Postal Service. He is also the author of several fantasy books in the Dragonlance series includingConundrumandThe Thieves' Guild.He lives in Mississippi with his wife and two sons.The Sleeping and the Deadis his first mystery.

Crook brings the world of the dead and the living together perfectly in this captivating mystery starring one of the most wonderful, unlikely protagonists I've come across. Jackie Lyons is a flat-out train wreck -- an ex-cop turned crime scene photographer battling addiction who happens to see dead people. You will love her, not in spite of her faults and demons, but because of them. Jennifer McMahon, New York Times bestselling author of Promisel_