Lucidity
February 7, 2017
Overlook Press
Available in hardcover
Available for Pre-order
Lucidity
After his “gripping thriller debut” (Kirkus) Knife Music and chilling follow-up The Big Exit, Carnoy’s Detective Hank Madden returns in this bicoastal suspense novel that pits dreams against reality, where nothing can be taken at face value.
Twenty years after the unsolved case of Stacey Walker’s disappearance went cold, police detective Hank Madden is conscripted to find her body and track down her missing husband, her presumed murderer. Four months later, editor Max Fremmer’s client Candace Epstein is pushed in front of a car near Central Park. As he digs into her background to clear his name, Fremmer grows suspicious of Candace’s connection to a nefarious institute for lucid dreaming on the Upper East Side. As similarities arise between the cases on each coast, Detective Madden and Fremmer forge an unlikely partnership to expose what misconduct lurks beneath the façade of the Lucidity Center and unravel the secret that links their investigations. Carnoy’s Lucidity stuns with complex detail that will keep readers guessing until the final, satisfying jolt.
Reviews
“David Carnoy gets better with each book... Lucidity is a Tour de Force of a thriller that captures you from the very first page”
—New York Times Bestselling Author, Harlan Coben
"At the start of Carnoy’s spellbinding third thriller (after 2012’s The Big Exit), Max Fremmer, a book doctor who lives on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, learns from an NYPD cop that his client Candace Epstein, who recently told him that “she knew something bad about someone,” has been pushed in front of a car on Central Park West with fatal results. In his search for the truth behind Candace’s death, the wily Max gets involved with the Lucid Dreaming Center, an institute that helps people control their dreams. Flash back four months to California, where retired detective Hank Madden of the Menlo Park PD decides to look into the decades-old cold case of Stacy Walker, who disappeared—as did her husband, Ross, who was suspected of her murder. Hank gets busy digging up a backyard where Stacy might be buried. Max and Hank connect with amusing results as their two cases converge. Carnoy's sharp sense of humor and clever plotting—a character suffers a pair of setbacks involving a check he didn’t write and a text he didn’t send—make this novel a standout."
—Publishers Weekly Starred Review