Sleep and His Brother

A strange malady afflicts the children of McNair House in this British mystery featuring former Scotland Yard superintendent James Pibble, from CWA Gold Dagger winner Peter Dickinson

Recently given the sack by Scotland Yard, James Pibble arrives at McNair House on a private matter, only to find that this charitable institution is not at all what it seems. The children who live here have a rare disease called cathypny, which renders them sleepy and fat. It also imbues them with special telepathic powers, which is how one boy instantly pegs Pibble as a cop.

A dreamy nine-year-old named Marilyn has perceived that someone at McNair House is in mortal danger. With all the research money that’s suddenly pouring in, the pressure is on to prove that these children really are empaths; a Greek tycoon is banking on it. But Pibble is beginning to suspect the worst kind of fraud: an exploitative con game using innocent young lives as bait. And one of the children may be the target of an escaped killer obsessed with the supernatural. Now Pibble must pit his own finely honed instincts against an adversary who can see the future: a world without James Pibble.

Sleep and His Brother is the 4th book in the James Pibble Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.

Peter Dickinson was born in Africa but raised and educated in England. From 1952 to 1969 he was on the editorial staff of Punch, and since then earned his living writing fiction of various kinds for children and adults. His books have been published in several languages throughout the world.
 
The author of twenty-one crime and mystery novels for adults, Dickinson was the first to win the Gold Dagger Award of the Crime Writers’ Association for two books running: The Glass-Sided Ants Nest (1968) and The Old English Peepshow (1969). Dickinson was shortlisted nine times for the prestigious Carnegie Medal for children’s literature and was the first author to win it twice.
 
Dickinson served as chairman of the Society of Authors and was a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 2009 for services to literature. Peter Dickinson died on December 16, 2015, at the age of eighty-eight.