Anna O

By Matthew Blake

Mystery/HarperCollins/Paperback/448 pages/$26.19/Amazon SG (amzn.to/43Lgxx7)
3 stars

Four years ago, Anna Ogilvy murdered her two best friends and then fell into a deep sleep from which she has never woken.

The media dubs her Anna O, the Sleeping Beauty who committed one of the worst crimes of the decade. Obsessed fanatics argue over her guilt. Internet sleuths hypothesise about a motive for the gruesome deaths.

None of that matters, only that Dr Ben Prince has been tasked with waking her so the legal system can finally decide if Anna was awake or sleepwalking when she stabbed two people to death.

While observing Anna from outside her patient room, Ben thinks: “I am within touching distance of a murderer. The thought is disturbing in every possible sense. Evil, in some people’s eyes, is literally sleeping in the next room.”

Formerly a researcher and speechwriter at the Palace of Westminster, British debut author Matthew Blake ventured into the world of fiction writing after learning that the average person spends 33 years of their life asleep – the same fact he opens the novel with. He is now a full-time writer based in London.

Blake’s detailed research into sleep-related crimes and resignation syndrome – a hypothesised condition induced by a state of minimal consciousness after trauma – is evident. However, a tendency to info-dump leaves chunks of the book feeling like an academic work rather than a murder mystery.

Instances where Anna describes her confusion and fear after waking from bouts of sleepwalking are the most human moments, breaking free of the textbook-like feel that the rest of the novel has when talking about other sleep-related illnesses.

Anna journals: “I am scared about who I become at night and what I might do. I am scared by the dark thoughts that sleep inside me.”

More interesting than the primary mystery are the journal entries in which Anna details her life in the months leading up to the murders. Writings of family drama, her desire for fame as a writer and a frenzied attempt to understand her sleepwalking are reminders Anna was once a young woman searching for her place in the world.

Much of the novel takes place through the eyes of Ben, with occasional chapters from other perspectives like those of his estranged wife Clara, Anna’s journal in 2019 and a mysterious woman named Lola.

As is often the nature of a male writer attempting the female voice, none of the women’s perspectives feels particularly convincing. The saving grace is that Blake avoids the women talking about themselves in a sexual manner or turning them into some ideal fantasy woman.

The drawn-out pacing sets the novel up to feel like a television show. Aptly enough, the adaptation rights have recently been acquired by Berlanti Productions and Warner Bros. Television, according to a Deadline article.

Where certain chapters feel dull in written form, they are likely to fare better where the visual format can build the visual and auditory tension that the text lacks.

Boldly, Blake offers an ending to the story with over 100 pages left, allowing readers and the characters to wonder if the mystery has truly been solved. The final reveal, while clever, lacks the intended impact after chapter upon chapter of lengthy mulling with little tension.

A drawn-out 448 pages in need of editing, Anna O reads like a one-hit-wonder too eagerly snapped up by television studios.

If you like this, read: Conviction by Jack Jordan (Simon & Schuster UK, 2023, $7.90, Amazon SG, go to amzn.to/3xjNnt9). Criminal lawyer Neve Harper is tasked with proving the innocence of a man accused of murdering his entire family. Blackmailed to ensure his jail sentence, she is torn between her legal duties and a guilty secret she has carried for years.