Here's the situation. I was introduced to Eric Jerome Dickey's Gideon Series with Dying for Revenge (book three in the series). I know, that is not how someone should enter into a collection, but it was on discount at Barnes and Noble, and I don't pay attention to the particulars when I'm intrigued with a concept. Gideon is a contract killer. He is the "hero" of the novel. That right there was enough to pull me in. Anyway, loved that book, so then I read the fourth book in the series: Resurrecting Midnight. And then I waited. I waited for book five. I've waited a long time. Finding Gideon has just come out, and I wanted to jump in and read it, but I changed course. Can't further the story until I discover more completely the past. So, I broke down, went to the public library and pulled this book off the shelf. Loved it. It starts on an airplane. Serendipitous events swirl around Gideon, and he begins to suspect everyone he comes in contact with is a potential threat: an assassin, just like him. And he has cause for alarm. Wait, it actually starts with a contract hit. One I learned about in one of the two previous books, but here I see it unfold in its original moment. Not a fleeting memory that haunts him, but the actual moment of violence. I enjoy thrillers that begin in the middle of the action. No wasted time with exposition. Right to the conflict. So Sleeping with Strangers begins with a thumbs up from me, and never lets me down. So, for those unfamiliar with EJD, he also writes erotica. And he writes "relationship" stories. His works would find their place on several different shelves of your library if you were cataloging them by genre. The Gideon series incorporates all three. So you have well developed relationships with believable dialogue that doesn't appear to be stilted from a male perspective (thin Jack Reacher novels), and you have powerful and intimate sexual encounters (that become a necessary escape from the violence for the reader and the characters), and you have a first class action novel, with plenty of unexpected twists (even after reading the later novels first). So, if this sounds like a thriller noir novel to your tastes, you will not be disappointed. You may, like me, find yourself so intrigued by the writer and his style, that you will go and pick up some of his other books that aren't in the thriller genre. One other element of Dickey's books that I love, is that you are actually in the place where the story is set. His descriptions of the locales are dead on. You could probably google map his settings and trace the streets and see the shops his characters are passing by. I actually feel as if I've visited the cities once I've read the story, or at least added particular places I want to visit onto my touring list. And he provides this description without losing the pace or tension of the story. It is wonderful. Stop reading now if you don't want to hear the one disappointment I have in the novel.
My only frustration with Sleeping with Strangers is the ending. The second book in the series, Waking with Enemies, is the conclusion to this story. I hate novels in a series that don't resolve at least one conflict introduced in the story. And there isn't a single complication in this book that is resolved. Not one. Everything is left on a cliff-hanging moment. If I had read this prior to the second book being on the market I would have been very disappointed. Needless to say, when I returned this to the library, I stormed back to the stacks, waving off the librarian asking if I needed help finding anything, yanked Waking with Enemies off the shelf, went straight to the counter, checked it out, and sat in the parking garage for twenty minutes plowing through the opening to book two. I honestly believe it was broken into two parts because the publisher wasn't sure a thriller over 700 pages would be marketable. Anyway, if you've read this far you're at least prepared for needing the second book to finish what you started. (That isn't the case with books three and four in the series).