Play Dead

Her USA Today bestseller, SLEEP TIGHT, was called compelling and real - a great read, by Andrea Kane. Guaranteed to keep you awake at night, raved Lisa Jackson. With her newest novel, Anne Frasier will really take your breath away... Watch your back, Elise. No one understands the dark side of Savannah better than homicide detective Elise Sandburg. As an infant, she was thought to be the daughter of a famous root doctor-and was abandoned in an ancient Low Country cemetery. Growing up, she was haunted by her possible connection to the local Gullah culture-with its spells and voodoo. Now, however, there s a twisted killer on the loose, and the city is gripped by terror. Someone is using a substance that leaves its victims in a state that mimics death. As their bodies slip into an irreversible paralysis, their minds remain fully, shockingly awake. Before you wake up dead. Step by step, Elise s relentless chase for the killer draws her straight back into the world she most fears. And now, to stop a murderer, she must confront the truth about her own past in ways she never could have imagined...

Publishers Weekly
Frasier (Sleep Tight, etc.) has perfected the art of making a reader s skin crawl, which is evident from this book s very first scene, in which a medical examiner discovers in the midst of an autopsy that the cadaver he s working on is really a live person. Set in Savannah, Ga., this exceptional thriller follows the hunt for the deranged person who s drugging people so that their minds remain wide awake even as their bodies resemble death. The creepiness factor increases when Frasier introduces homicide detective Elise Sandburg, who was abandoned in a cemetery as a baby and who knows Gullah spells and culture. Elise s partner, anti-social David Gould, is equally strange; his past holds secrets so dark he should be under psychiatric care. Formerly with the FBI, Gould currently lives in a rundown, foul-smelling apartment and sleeps with a prostitute who works for a voodoo priestess. As the two detectives follow leads to the priestess and the former college professor who researched the drug, they forge a tentative bond and come to terms with their own troubled pasts. Frasier s characters are not only fully realized, but fascinating to boot, and she evokes the dark, mystical side of Savannah with precision and skill. Appropriately, this unsettling tale closes with a grim children s rhyme and a spell for Elise s Follow-Me-Boy Mojo.