The Restless Sleep: Inside New York City's Cold Case Squad

I couldn't put this book down. Horn writes with great feeling, knowledge and insight about the victims, suspects and police investigators involved in each of the real life cold case stories she tells. She expertly navigates the complex web that connects all of the participants to create a rich experience that reads like the best fiction.

I couldn't put this book down! Horn keeps the suspense going among the cold cases she follows. Her descriptions of the detectives involved are colorful and put you inside of their heads and their lives. I had to put the book down at times because I was so into the horror of the cases. But it was worth it. Highly recommended true crime!!!

A disclaimer: Horn is gripping for reasons already noted on this page: her aptitude for getting deep under the skin of her subjects, and bringing that depth deep under the skin of her readers. Her captivating voice and yen for the finer details of procedure, of files, of inventory. Her compassion for the dead and use of the book as a eulogy for them. Et cetera. But: here's what's absolutely remarkable about it. Walking around the streets of Brooklyn (and though The Restless Sleep is local to New York, these stories can be dropped onto any city, really), you feel you've been treated to a history lesson, a detailed reminder of the ghosts in the buildings, under the streets, in the waters around you. This morbid niche of history helps comprise the breathing pulse of a city, and this is the moral lesson here. And: what matters most-- it's simply a great read.

"The Restless Sleep," Stacy Horn's new book about new York City's Cold Case Squad is unique among recent true crime books or police procedurals. This is mostly due to Horn's own obsessions (chronicled in two previous non-crime-related books) with death, loss and the ephemeral nature of life and human relationships. It may seem to make her an odd match for a book about a police work, but it's actually a perfect choice. After deploying all of her considerable charms (and baking skills) to befriend the cops, Horn uses the stories of the Cold Case squad as a window through which she allows the reader to experience the relentless and genuinely heartbreaking way criminal cases get under the skin of cops, victims, survivors and perpetrators alike and never let go, even after decades have passed. And along the way you get some novel insights into NYC Police Dept politics pre-and post-9/11, an vivid recreation of 1950s Brooklyn (and the tragic effects the big town can have on dreamy small town girls), a sad look at the threadbare seediness of the mob today, and countless details about procedure -- from booking to paperwork to how the "lab" we hear so much about on tv really works -- that give an authentic picture of day-to-day police life. And all of this is recounted without a lot of put-on authorial mannerisms. Horn is "there" with the reader, she writes like someone you might actually know telling you about this fascinating stuff she's been getting into lately. And that's part of the book's charm: it's Horn's story too, told in a voice that's always personal, often plaintive and occasionally laugh-out-loud funny. I have now given or recommended Restless Sleep to many people. One recipient was, like me, a big fan of "Waiting For My Cats to Die" (Horn's previous book). This recipient protested that she had no interest in cops or crime, but after she read the Restless Sleep she said she realized that it didn't matter. That it was Horn's voice, her point of view and her underlying obsessions that made the book so moving and compelling. (Though I think we both have a newfound appreciation for police work.)

I mean that literally. Horn's book was one of those where I'm in bed reading, it's way past my bedtime, and I keep thinking "Just one more page..." Here's what you get between the covers: real, sometimes flawed heroes, and heartbreakingly real vicitims, and the very real and therefore sometimes flawed process by which the murderers are tracked down and brought to justice. There are a number of unsolved murder stories that loop back and forth and over and through each other, and the book's structure makes that work. It's a page turner that defies expectations. Or, put simply: an excellent read.