Mystery Girl: A Novel
Sam Kornberg, the initial narrator and main character of this complex, identity-shifting murder mystery (and more), set around contemporary Los Angeles, is a part-time bookstore clerk, writer of experimental fiction, and overall “failure”; then he takes a much-needed job to save his troubled marriage—as assistant detective to the intriguing and oversized (in every way) Solar Lonsky. When the narrative voice shifts to Lonsky, the book becomes an intricate puzzle set amid a deeply underground and obsessive cinema subculture. This is not Raymond Chandler’s L.A.—it’s postpunk and postgoth, and involves the occult and the luridly sexual—but Chandler’s shadow inevitably hangs over it, as do the literary shades of Proust, Beckett, and Pynchon, and the equally strong cinematic influences of the Hitchcock of Vertigo and the Welles of Touch of Evil. The book is filled with literary and cinematic references, befitting the neophyte writer Kornberg. Gordon’s appealing wit and obvious intellect propel this gripping tale to a finely wrought and mostly unexpected conclusion. Gordon is a promising writer. --Mark Levine