The brilliant thing about this book is how deftly it illustrates how a straightforward noir-in-the-big-city can be so fresh and different, creating a wildly compelling narrative. Through the voice of a protagonist with Tourette’s syndrome, enabling a confluence of word play that humanizes Lionel, even as it reveals a sub layer of power dynamics that comes with language, irrevocably tied to how it is wired into our minds. It’s an amazing juxtaposition with the necessary obscurity of a detective seeking out and contextualizing clues.

And so much information there is to be revealed, as Lionel actually knows very little of his present circumstances. Only now he is galvanized despite the social perceptions pressuring him, and discovering who he is when his identity is divorced from his mentor, role model, brother, father, and friend.

A very happy byproduct of this reframe is some of the most pleasurable prose work I’ve consumed. It drips with grit yet subverts expectations of genre, bringing in a high degree of specificity and interesting diction under Lionel’s ecosystem of references manifest in tics. Even when stifled they “say” something. The result is literary experience in prose and character work; subverting just the right amount of tropes; evoking similar standbys. It is immeasurably satisfying and completely unique, at least to me.