Understanding the Novel

Next page contains SPOILERS and it is meant as a guide for people who read or are in process or reading Night of Dead Dreams. It is written by experts who are helping the readership break down the plot and characters, as an assistance for better understanding of this novel.

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The Night of Dead Dreams Synopsis

The plot of the Night of Dead Dreams follows a vigilante, a crime lord, a con artist and a college professor in four only seemingly unrelated stories in different alternate realities after a physics experiment gone wrong. With its horror, science fiction, and mystery elements, this thriller promises to keep a wide audience page-turning until the very end.

The life of a well-known Russian mathematician Damian Borisenko changes after meeting Nicolo de Luca, an Italian student studying chaos theory in Amsterdam. After returning to Russia, Borisenko, an abused child, figures out a way to build a time machine with the intention of changing his childhood. In the process, he relives his life twice – as a criminal mastermind, and a corrupted detective. The plot of the Night of Dead Dreams follows these three alternate realities, from the perspective of the three different Borisenkos, De Luca, a vigilante who calls himself the Gentleman and a teenage con artist Alexander.

The Three Different Borisenkos[1]

The Professor

The life of a well-known Russian physicist Damian Borisenko changes after meeting Nicolo de Luca, an Italian student studying chaos theory in Amsterdam. After returning to Russia, Borisenko, an abused child, figures out a way to build a time machine with the intention of changing his childhood. In the process, he relives his life twice – as a criminal mastermind, and a corrupted detective.

The Patriarch

The young Borisenko displayed high intelligence, but aggressiveness as well in school. After the death of his physics professor he decides to drop out and becomes a member of the Russian mafia, second only to the infamous Oleg Ivanov. While working as a bodyguard for Ivanov’s son, Evgeni Ivanov, Borisenko finds out Evgeni raped and killed his mother and kills Evgeni to avenge her. Running away from the Mafia, Borisenko changes his name and goes to Europe where he becomes an infamous mobster himself known as the Patriarch.

Detective Levi

After running away from home the young Borisenko is adopted by Ligachev, the captain of the Moscow police department. After the death of his physics professor he decides to drop out and, looking up to his stepfather, enrolls at the Moscow Police Academy. During an investigation he finds out Evgeni Ivanov raped and killed his birth mother and kills Evgeni to avenge her. He changes his name to Levi and runs away to become a detective in Europe, where he cooperates with a vigilante who calls himself the Gentleman. Whenever Levi does not have enough evidence to prosecute, he contacts the Gentleman who takes justice into his own hands. Levi occasionally protects criminals for a fee, by withholding information from the Gentleman and not initiating his own investigation.

The Three Stories

On the Gentleman

On his way to his friend’s apartment, the Gentleman establishes an inexplicable connection with a girl on the bus stop and decides to follow her on the next bus, but loses her track due to a traffic accident caused by a group of Chinese nationals (who, as it later turns out, are members of the mafia who were following the girl as well). He reaches his friend’s apartment who, after seeing the girl’s photograph, reveals he knows her. She is a teaching assistant at the local university, and the Gentleman decides to break-in into the university offices looking for the girl’s address.

While he’s looking for the documents the Chinese mobsters also break in, and they turn out to be far less inconspicuous than the Gentleman. An alarm sounds and the police are called. The Gentleman manages to escape the police with the documents, and he finds the girl’s apartment abandoned in haste. The Chinese catch up to him at the apartment and a shooting scene occurs, first time revealing the main character’s familiarity with firearms and martial arts.

Still determined to find out what happened to the girl, he continues his investigation that leads him to a counterfeiter who specializes in making fake passports. He confirms the girl is his customer, and that the Chinese mafia is after her because she used to work as a prostitute for them until running away.

The Gentleman’s identity is revealed for the first time when he decides to confront the known members of the Chinese mafia, at which point he finds out the girl is supposed to be traded to another gang later on. However, after hearing two of its members are dead, one gang suspects they were betrayed by the other, the deal fails and a shooting occurs, leaving members of both gangs dead.

It turns out detective Levi was supposed to protect this deal, and after arriving at the scene and seeing all the slaughter Levi believes the Gentleman is to blame, and in anger decides to kill him.

On Nicolo de Luca

A cell phone in De Luca’s apartment, which has been broken for several years, inexplicably starts receiving messages from an unidentified person who helps him escape unknown assailants who break into his apartment looking for him. After the escape, the person introduces herself as Marie, and De Luca finds out she’s a well-known ice skater who was killed several years ago in Budapest. Intrigued, he decides to go to Budapest in hopes of finding out more about the person helping him and why is he suddenly being hunted.

After arriving at the hotel where Marie died, De Luca is confronted by Interpol agents who are investigating her death. They tell him the people who broke into his apartment are members of a criminal group that is trying to cover up circumstances surrounding Marie’s death.

De Luca wakes up in the middle of the following night to find out he is trapped in the hotel, and remembering a lecture Borisenko gave on parallel universes he concludes he is set to continuously relive the night in which Marie died. The strange phenomenon increases aggressiveness in some individuals turning them into zombies, so using what he learned from Borisenko and with Marie’s help, De Luca struggles to save her, break the cycle and return to the real world, while avoiding other hotel guests who are now trying to kill him.

On Alexander

Alexander lives a double life of a high school student and a proficient scoundrel. After stealing a large sum of money from the Patriarch, Alexander and his team find themselves hunted by the crime lord who wishes to make an example out of them. After hearing that the Patriarch found out their names and already killed one of their team members, Alexander decides to escape by enrolling at a prestigious university in Brazil, and sets-up one last fraud to help him do just that – a highly technical way to cheat his way through the university’s entrance exam.