Neon Fever Dream

Neon Fever Dream is a fantastic story by Eliot Peper, his fifth novel, all of which have been reviewed in Men Reading Books, all of which I thought were excellent and unusual crime novels. Novel novels, go figure.

Asha Amarasuriya is a Ceylonese woman who was raised on a tea plantation in the middle of her island, having grown up in a highly protected and privileged situation. As an adolescent, she was mentored by Dov Cohn, in an Israeli system for close combat called Krav Maga. After working with him for several years, he suddenly disappeared without explanation. Asha found her way to the U.S. where she became a Krav Maga instructor. It was doing that work when she met a new student, Lynn Chevalier, an investigative reporter, who was working on a story about the darknet, the secretive side of the internet where really bad guys do their dealings.

Peper takes the action from the Bay Area to Burning Man when Lynn announced that she had an extra ticket, and Asha accepted her offer to travel there in response to a demand for her parents in Sri Lanka that she accept an arranged marriage. Peper’s description of Burning Man is incredible, and there was nefarious action going on behind the scenes there with regard to the darknet. It’s difficult to write more without giving away too much of the plot, but this novel has all the necessary elements - good and interesting character development and a fast moving plot. The secondary characters were equally good and helped with the story development. Given Asha’s martial arts talents, you can guess that some hand-to-hand combat occurred, and Peper knows how to write a fight scene. This story grabbed me from the outset with the introduction of Kelemete Koloi, a Tongan Crip from Salt Lake City.

I read Neon Fever Dream straight through, so if you take my advice and buy this book, you’re in for a treat.