Book Review: 3AM. by Nick Pirog

3 A.M. by Nick Pirog is a nifty short story with a very peculiar slant. It is about a fellow named Henry Bins who suffers from Henry Bins syndrome. Two other people in the world have it. It's named after him as the first diagnosed with it. He sleeps 23 hours every day. He wakes up at 3 A.M. every day for an hour. He measures his time in minutes. If he's not in bed by 4 he collapses where ever he is. This would be a neat book just about Henry but there's a crime added to it. Just before he retires he hears a woman scream. He looks out the window and sees the POTUS leaving the house. He falls asleep at the window. Next day at 3 A.M. he wakes up and goes to investigate. The doors are unlocked so he examines the house. He finds a cat who follows him everywhere. The cat, which he names Lassie, leads him to a door. As soon as he nears it he can smell it. There's a young woman lay dead over her car and appears to have been strangled. He finds a pink phone and picks it up and puts into his pocket. Then realizing it's almost 4 and he wont make it home in time, he hides and sleeps in a closet. This story keeps getting better. Read the book for when the detectives arrest him and when he meets Robert Sullivan, the POTUS. It is such a creative, refreshing, genuinely original thriller! You have to solve a murder mystery where you saw President of the US himself leaving the murder scene, but you don't have anything to prove his involvement. You have ONLY ONE HOUR of each day to investigate it, because you have a freaky condition where you can only be awake for a single hour from 3 to 4 AM in a whole day... Not to mention, you yourself are quickly becoming the main suspect to the police. The writing is crisp & to the point, the character is great, the plot is positively suspenseful, the storytelling is no-nonsense, the pace is lightning fast, plus there's is plenty of dark humor. And there are couple of really great out-of-left field twist & turns that I honestly didn't anticipated! Overall this little novella of 100 or so pages packed way more punches to me than many other 400-500+ page thrillers.