Book cover of The Taiga Syndrome

Book description

Fairy tale meets detective drama in this David Lynch–like novel by a writer Jonathan Lethem calls “one of Mexico's greatest . . . we are just barely beginning to catch up to what she has to offer.”

A fairy tale run amok, The Taiga Syndrome follows an unnamed Ex-Detective as…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Taiga Syndrome as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

The crime scene generally occurs near the start of a mystery—something incomprehensible and threatening the reader and detective will endeavor to explain by the book’s end. Sometimes, though, the world is the crime. In almost painfully beautiful language, this book sets us down in a frightening fairytale forest. We’re traveling with a failed detective looking for a runaway wife, but much of the investigative work emanates from the reader attempting—and often failing—to break through the atmosphere, through the visceral but unmappable feelings of danger and loss the text produces in order to find something that can be named, explained, neutered.…

From Eugenie's list on shapeshifting detective stories.

If you love The Taiga Syndrome...

Book cover of December on 5C4

December on 5C4 by Adam Strassberg,

Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!

On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…

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