This picks up nicely after an extremely slow start - I was tempted to stop reading, but in the end I was glad that I didn't. This isn't your usual sort of mystery, though. Nothing is solved, and nothing is certain. More than anything, it reminds me of works by the Japanese writer Kōbō Abe, if more embedded in realism. The protagonist, Quinn, is mistaken for a private detective and decides to run with the deception, become ever more obsessive in his quest to complete his assignment. Homelessness and a mental health crisis follow, and it's all put together very well, with a lot of thought behind it... but there's also no emotional effect whatsoever, at least for me. Abe often induces a real sense of horror as his characters seek to navigate a shifting and unstable world, but the presentation of Quinn is so deadened, emotionally, that while I can appreciate the story here on an intellectual level, I just don't feel anything for it.