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2025 Nostalgia Re-readathon | SVU Thriller #8: Dead Before Dawn
Every second counts when you're about to die...
Time is running out for Bruce Patman. He has less than forty-eight hours to find out who poisoned him...and why. Forty-eight hours before the deadly toxin takes his life.
Everyone around Bruce has a secret. Everyone seems suspicious. Even Lila Fowler, the woman he loves.
Bruce is on a frantic search to discover who wants him dead. And the clock is ticking...
Somehow, it just isn't a re-readathon without some SVU, even though we don't always read one every year. This one fell right in my sweet spot: mid-canon, Bruce/Lila ship sailing freely, and everyone is in character. This book is definitely helped by only have 3 main characters (Bruce, Lila, and Jessica Wakefield at her best), so the POVs were limited and the plot was able to move at a fairly lightning pace.
The novel opens with Bruce putting the finishing touches on a screenplay, a homework assignment for his new favorite class at SVU. He's worked on it for 2 weeks straight, neglecting everything and everyone (read: Lila) in order to finish it on time. He think it's really good and hopes his professor, Academy award-winning Dennis Gordon, will agree, and maybe even help him sell it in Hollywood.
Buoyed by such hopes, he scrambles to get ready for class, knowing he owes Lila a big apology for neglecting her. He decides to print a copy of his screenplay for her, so she can see what took his attention away from her. He runs out of paper halfway through, and has to use leftover pink paper from one of her earlier bright ideas. It amuses him, thinking she may appreciate a pink copy. His own copy is half white, half pink, and the one he'll turn in is white. The colors of the paper turn out to be very important.
Bruce tries to catch Lila before class, but she's nowhere to be found, and - even worse, in his eyes - some other guy is sending her roses. He is angry - who dares try to step in on his woman?! - and tears up the card that accompanies them, leaving his manuscript behind with the flowers as if it's one big gift from him. He hurries off to class, which he just happens to share with Jessica, who somehow made it into the ultra-competitive class over her sister. Jessica is excited about the class and the possibility of stardom via her association with the professor. She even gets him to sign a copy of his award-winning script for Elizabeth when she turns in her screenplay project. Adding to her interest in the class (and Professor Gordon) is the tragic story of Belinda Beringer, a former SVU student who was Gordon's prize student in years past. A new wing will be dedicated in her honor at the film school, and Jessica has Major Plans for that party.
Lila, meanwhile, is pretty steamed about Bruce's inattentions, so when a handsome blond man flirts with her on the quad, she decides that she'll consider going out with him, if only to show Bruce what he's about to lose. She is Not Impressed with Bruce's paltry offering of the flowers and a pink manuscript, and even less so when it turns out her new man, Marcus, actually sent the flowers and Bruce just took the credit. In a fit of pique, she accepts Marcus's invitation for a date, though she almost immediately regrets it. Is a 6'5" blond tennis player really worth throwing away her entire relationship with Bruce?
Bruce is so excited for Professor Gordon's feedback on his screenplay that he more or less consistently bothers him about it. He even sets up shop in the film school library while attempting to catch up on his other classes. He inadvertently leaves his pink and white copy of the screenplay at the library, though he doesn't realize it till later. Finally Gordon invites Bruce to his palatial office to give him his precious feedback - and Gordon pronounces that it's a BIG STINKER. Bruce is absolutely heartbroken. He's so sure that it was interesting and original, a story about a victim of poisoning who has to figure out who is trying to kill him in order to save his own life, but Gordon's pronouncement sinks his hopes. He tries to find Lila, whom he mentions has a copy of the script, but when she's not home, he decides to nurse his misery at a local dive bar instead.
Jessica, meanwhile, is bored. Liz is out of town for some sort of journalism trip, leaving her alone in their dorm. She's trying not to spend all her time at Theta House, because that will make her look pathetic. Therefore, she jumps at the chance when Steven calls and says he and some of his law school buddies are heading for a bar, and would she like to come along? Of course she says yes, and of course she takes 2 hours to prepare herself for the handsome law school men. By the time she makes it to the bar, she realizes that Steven's crowd has already left; on her way out, she spots Bruce drinking by himself and basically takes pity on him. She figures he'll need some help getting home (though she is relieved to learn he walked there instead of risking his precious Porsche), and tries to walk him back, but he detours to a frat party with a despised frat brother that Jessica hates, and then ends up following her back to her dorm and collapsing in the doorway.
Meanwhile, Lila has been on her date with Marcus, regretting it the entire time, and then even moreso when Marcus tries to get fresh, she declines, and he blows up at her. She goes over to Jessica's room the day after to commiserate with her, only to find Bruce in Liz's bed and Jessica sitting beside him, looking very cozy indeed. She screams and takes off, but when she arrives home, she's konked over the head in her bathroom and left unconscious.
Jessica taunts Bruce, who can't remember anything after the bar the night before, even leading him to believe that they slept together, which pains him almost as much as his hangover. Jessica finally tells him she's just kidding, but that he looks especially terrible - is he sick? He denies it and gets up to go after Lila, even though Jessica promises to tell Lila the truth and smooth things over. Bruce makes it halfway to Lila's apartment and falls over on the sidewalk.
He wakes up in the hospital, where a Doctor Martin grimly informs him that he has been poisoned, but they can't figure out with what. She tells him that he basically only has a day and a half left before he succumbs to the deadly mix. Martin asks him to try to remember everything he did the previous day to see if they can pinpoint how and where he was poisoned. Bruce leaves the hospital and goes straight to Jessica, whom he accuses of trying to kill him (is it that much of a leap after the other lies she teased him about?) Jessica of course denies it, but she can see that Bruce is clearly very sick, and agrees to help him. They go to the grand opening of the new wing of the film school, where Bruce spots the dude who was angry and upset at the bar, and who shared a beer with him. Jessica recognizes him as a fellow student from their film class, Marcus Stratton, and puts two and two together about him and Lila. Bruce is furious with Marcus for taking Lila out on a date and is convinced that he's the one who poisoned him. Bruce and Jessica follow Marcus when he leaves - Bruce is too sick to drive, so he gives the keys to Jessica, who is beyond excited at the idea of finally driving this precious car. She takes off, racing through freeway traffic and then hairpin turns on a hill in Crestview as they tail Marcus, but unfortunately they lose him and actually go through a guardrail, careening into the caverns below.
Miraculously, they aren't hurt, though Bruce's car is completely toast. Bruce doesn't take any time to mourn it, though, worried about Lila and determined to catch the man he believes is trying to kill him. They eventually make it back to the top of the cliff and catch a ride to a gas station to check in with Doc Martin, but she doesn't have any good news. Bruce decides to steal a car and continue following Marcus, though he deftly manages to drop Jess off at the hospital and leave without her, much to her consternation. He finds Marcus and sees him reading the pink and white copy of the manuscript, and the two of them start to fight. Bruce is extremely weak from the poison and the car wreck, so he's on the losing side of the fight; next thing he knows, Marcus has been shot dead by someone from the outside, and his script is missing.
Bruce calls in the murder to the police and then hightails it to Lila's, knowing that she did indeed go out with this dude. He is heartstricken when he finds the unconscious Lila in her bathroom, and calls an ambulance for the second time that night. He is determined to spend his final moments on earth with his beloved, but she insists that he doesn't.
With nowhere else to turn, and realizing that he seems to be living out the very screenplay that he wrote, he decides to meet Professor Gordon and see if he has any ideas. Bruce wants to meet at Gordon's office on campus, and while he waits for him, he realizes that Gordon has taken the copy of the script, turned in as homework, and added a new title page to it, claiming it as his own. It FINALLY dawns on him that Gordon is the one who poisoned him, in order to steal his script, though he can't for the life of him figure out why.
We all know why, right? Because obviously he also stole the script that won him the Academy Award, and because he's a complete hack, he figures he'll strike twice in the goldmine that is his film class. Yes, he's the one who murdered poor Belinda Beringer, it was her script that won him critical acclaim, and he's basically going to do the same to Bruce.
Bruce has just realized that the poison was in the scotch that Gordon offered him while telling him his script was trash when Gordon arrives. He of course gives an OTT villain monologue while he's trying to strangle Bruce, first with his hands and then with a lamp chord, but Jessica bursts into the office just in time to see what's happening. She picks up the first weapon she can find and knocks Gordon out. Unfortunately, she chose the decanter of scotch, and it shatters into a million pieces, the poisoned scotch soaking into the rug.
Bruce laments the irony of his fate - finding the poison and then losing it with mere minutes to live - until he finds the glass he was drinking from the day before, which he didn't empty but hid on the windowsill. There's still some scotch left! He's saved!!
Bruce and Jessica rush to the hospital with the scotch and burst into the lab, where Dr Martin has just about given up hope on finding the poison; Lila is also there, crying over her inevitable loss. Lila is so happy to see Bruce that she almost knocks him over - mercifully after he gives Dr Martin the glass - and Bruce is hurried into a hospital room of his own. Martin has analyzed the scotch and found the antidote, which she gives Bruce, along with the news that he will, indeed, live.
The final chapter finds Bruce still in this hospital, surrounded by flowers from well-wishes, receiving Porsche brochures so he can choose his next ride. Jessica and Lila are with him as he fields calls from agents who want to shop his manuscript around, not only due to the Gordon connection, but because of his own almost-death. Bruce being Bruce arranges for photos to be taken of the injuries he sustained at Gordon's hands to up the ante in the war being raged over his screenplay. He tells Lila to buy a new dress for the Academy Awards, and the book ends on a happy but sappy note of them, vowing to love each other forever.
I LOVED this book. It had the right trio of characters at the center, all of them in character despite the ridiculousness around them, and the pace is extremely lively. It's written like a true thriller, and has the beats of an actual thriller writer as the ghostie. Jessica is at her most extremely awesome here, both in wit (telling Bruce that if she was going to kill him, it would've been in high school) and action (her mad skillz driving Bruce's car, which even Bruce had to give her props for). Seriously, I **love** this Jessica and wished we got to see more of her! Lila even gets a few strikes in, having stomped on Gordon's foot when he attacked her hard enough to probably break his toes and leave him with a telltale limp. And my ship? OMG! Bruce even gives a canon shout-out when he talks about the plane crash that stranded them together and served as the beginning of their relationship. My heart was just melting! ♥
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impy and I weren't sure if this would be a good book to close out our readathon with, so we decided to stick it in the middle in case it sucked. We needn't have worried - this was awesome!
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Love all of Bruce's 911/cop contacts and it's killing me that at some point, someone was probably like, "wtf is this dude doing?"