A Dream within a Dream
Coffey & Hill #3
by Mike Nappa

My rating: 4 / 5
Genre: Thriller/suspense, Christian

Private investigator Trudi Coffey and her ex-husband, ex-CIA agent, ex-private investigator, now Atlanta cop, Samuel Hill are separately pointed to a man known as Dream, who has knowledge highly prized by multiple different agencies. His well-being is in danger, possibly his life, and he is suffering from PTSD that has left him with holes in his memory.

This book delivers excitement, suspense, and intrigue like the other two in the series. The trend of involving writings of Edgar Allen Poe also continues, including another character in need who is named after a Poe work, this time the troubled and much sought-after Dream. He provides the first-person, present-tense perspective throughout this story as he relates to us various different events from his past that led to him being in his current predicament. The issue, though, is that these different events are jumbled together in the telling. This is indicative of the way he is processing his past and current events that bring up difficult memories, but I kept waiting for things to clear up and make more sense, and they never completely did.

Trudi and Samuel provide the other perspectives (3rd person, past tense), and while Trudi’s is familiar and provides the clearest narrative, Samuel’s is the other main reason I didn’t like this as much as I did the previous 2 books in the series. There’s just too much going on. The storyline about Dream and some stolen artwork was complex enough, to my mind, that adding a family from the Middle East coming after Samuel because he was involved in the death of one of their own was unnecessary. In the end, it seemed to only be in there to give us a particular ending, which wasn’t really my favorite kind of ending anyway. It doesn’t really leave it open for more books in this series, though some feel that it does and I’d certainly love to see more Coffey & Hill someday.

This book may not have quite held up to the high standard set by the previous 2 books in the series, but I still enjoyed it overall. And I am so glad I found this series in general, as it’s a new favorite for me. I definitely recommend it to fans of suspense and thriller novels, especially with a Christian leaning, and you don’t necessarily need to read them in order.

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