This is an existential detective novel about a private investigator who flees New York City for Colombia after a personal tragedy and finds himself entangled in a young woman's strange disappearance—which may be connected to one of the world's most ruthless criminal organizations.
De La Pava has an ear for language: the way it evolves and sometimes devours itself. The exchanges between Riv and his cousins, Mauro and Fercho, provide the novel’s funniest, most revealing passages ... De La Pava’s commitment to ideas — their creation and their interrogation — is so fervid that it lights up his prose. Riv wants to take us somewhere new, as intellectual strivers always want to, whether their stories are bound within a philosophical argument, a sweeping historical epic or a good old-fashioned detective yarn. It’s invigorating to be dropped in the middle of such an effort and to feel that whatever we might guess is coming next, the truth is likely to be much, much stranger.
The demolition derby of interests and influences creates a similarly freewheeling effect. But as it continues to toggle between Riv’s solemn musings about 'life in all its multidimensional terror' and scenes of Exeter’s comic-book villainy, the story comes to feel fatally undecided, lodged somewhere between earnest philosophical inquiry and blithe entertainment.
De la Pava creates a structural mirror for his protagonist’s (insufficiently) logical method, prefacing most chapters with an argument about what will follow ... De la Pava conjures an enjoyable cast of supporting characters ... De la Pava takes his time arriving at any sort of resolution, a pace at odds with the urgent present tense of his narration. There are many authors who manage to write deep, layered prose while maintaining the immediacy of the present, but here this technique often generates a hectic, flattened feeling, like an insect zipping around too quickly for your eyes to follow. Such disorientation rarely works well at length.
