Before I Wake is David Morrell’s third short-story collection and his first since the 2004 publication of Nightscape. There are fourteen stories included here, and they encompass a range of themes, settings, and approaches. Stories such as “My Name Is Legion” and “The Interrogator” are action thrillers. Others, such as “Time Was” and “The Companions,” reflect the influence of writers such as Rod Serling and Ray Bradbury. Literary figures, among them J. D. Salinger (“The Architecture of Snow”), Arthur Conan Doyle (“The Spiritualist”), and Laura Ingalls Wilder (“They”) make appearances in this volume. Saul and Erika (The Brotherhood of the Rose and The League of Night and Fog) return in “The Abelard Sanction.” Cavanaugh (The Protector and The Naked Edge) is featured in a trio of protective-agent stories, beginning with “Blue Murder.” Thomas De Quincey, protagonist of Murder As a Fine Art and its companion Victorian mysteries, makes a confession in “The Opium-Eater.”