Every Arc Bends Its Radian

What begins as a familiar PI tale morphs into a Pynchonesque nightmare in this confounding concoction from de la Pava (Lost Empress). Riv del Rio has come from New York City to Cali, Colombia, to escape a recent trauma. He quickly reconnects with his cousin Mauro and an older family friend named Carlotta, who asks Riv, a self-described “poet/philosopher/private eye,” to track down her missing daughter, Angelica. With Mauro’s help, Riv determines that Angelica is being held by Exeter Mondragon, a sadistic crime lord with a self-stated mission to “deepen despair, misery, horror.” Though Riv acknowledges he stands little chance of rescuing Angelica, he enters Mondragon’s lair and is promptly captured, with Mondragon laying out an elaborate plan to torture and kill him over the course of 18 hours. Mondragon’s agenda changes, however, when Angelica reemerges, and the story takes a hard turn into the realm of speculative fiction. The narrative momentum is frequently stalled by Riv’s philosophical musings (“Whenever illegitimate power is exercised, the universe grants us the opposite power to author its disruption”), and readers looking for a straightforward mystery will be frustrated by de la Pava’s hodgepodge of moods and genres. Still, there’s no denying that this bizarre detective story holds a hypnotizing power all its own. (Nov.)