A house called Wit's End is only the beginning

April 27, 2008|Hallie Ephron

Wit’s End
By Karen Joy Fowler
Putnam, 324 pp., $24.95

Delusion
By Peter Abrahams
Morrow, 297 pp., $24.95

Cheating at Solitaire
By Jane Haddam
St. Martin’s, 400 pp., $24.95

Literary writers from John Banville to Michael Chabon and Joyce Carol Oates have taken a turn writing mysteries. Now we have Karen Joy Fowler ("The Jane Austen Book Club") with "Wit's End," an idiosyncratic mystery that feels like a leisurely wander through a hall of mirrors.

Protagonist Rima Lanisell is unhinged by the recent death of her journalist father and still mourning the death of her younger brother. Her mother died years earlier. Finding herself without family, she seeks refuge at the Santa Cruz, Calif., home of her godmother, famous mystery author Addison ("A. B.") Early. Addison's beachside house (Wit's End) is a rambling affair, its attic stuffed with books and letters, and its rooms filled with dollhouses - meticulously constructed crime scenes from A. B. Early books. Rima wonders why she can't find the one for "Ice City," the novel that fascinates her most. In it, a character named after Rima's father kills his wife.

The novel "Ice City," the narrator tells us, is "about betrayal, the unforeseen consequences of careless actions, the advisability of keeping secrets" - a perfect description of "Wit's End." Ice City is not a city at all, but an imaginary bar where fictional detective Maxwell Lane goes to sort out his thoughts. It's "a state of mind, a psychological destination" where "made-up drinks are served to made-up people."

With its book within a book, houses within a house, and dreamy stream-of-consciousness narration, this is a novel in which reality and virtual reality, fact and fiction, memories and dreams merge. As Rima gropes her way back to the real world, mysteries are unraveled. Strongly recommended, this is a head trip that takes the reader to unexpected places.

Peter Abrahams's taut new novel, "Delusion," is set in the once-pristine New Orleans suburb of Belle Ville in the aftermath of Bernardine, a Katrina-like disaster. Putrefaction permeates the pages as the "the stink of mud, rot, decomposition" wafts from nearby Lower Town, where the cleanup from storm-breached levees goes on.

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