To be released!

To be released at local bc meeting.

I claimed this softcover from the BookCrossing meetup in Brookline today. The cover-art and jacket-blurb appealed to me, and when I heard that the author's a local bookseller I couldn't pass it up. (Great to see everybody! I wound up taking more books than I brought; check out my cat Trooper inspecting the haul {wry grin}.)

Later: I enjoyed some elements of the book, including the many and varied references to other works - overt homage to Tey's Daughter of Time, to James Joyce, to Poe's "The Purloined Letter" (with deconstruction), a chapter that opens with a warning that it contains spoilers for the movie "Chinatown" - as well as less-overt nods to a variety of authors, works, and genres. The author delights in switching viewpoints, giving the characters' internal thoughts alongside over-the-shoulder commentary. The characters refer to common mystery tropes often - very often - and that seems to feature as motive and method as well as topics of conversation.

The language is lots of fun, rambling on and then darting this way or that, definitely making for a lively read - if an often-hard-to-follow one. There are formatting games - chapters with dense text at the margins, fact-plotting matrices, excerpts from papers given at a conference, etc. And the plots - well, the crimes involved (one major mystery, one vicious murder, plus additional crimes) are convoluted in the extreme, or at least seem so. I admit that seeing how they unravel felt a bit underwhelming after all the cleverness and zippy dialogue earlier on.

I left this book propped up near the outside seating area of the diner at the newly-expanded rest area (I-98 southbound) at around 10; hope the finder enjoys it!

*** Released as part of the 2016 Keep Them Moving release challenge. ***

*** Released as part of the 2016 You're Such an Animal release challenge, for the embedded "rat" in the title. ***