Fata Morgana by William Kotzwinkle
Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)
William Kotzwinkle blends elements of fantasy and mystery in this curious novel. Set in 1861 in Paris, detective Picard finds he’s getting the crappy assignments simply because he burnt a tenement down in the course of an unsuccessful pursuit of the serial killer Baron Mantes.
Picard’s mission is to investigate the doings of a charlatan who’s separating gullible members of the aristocracy from their money. The swindler is using a fortune-telling machine that pops out predictions on the order of, “People close to you have been taking advantage of you. Your basic honesty has been getting in your way.” Really? Like that’s not accurate for, like, everybody?
The fantasy elements are keen senses of wonder and the macabre, especially in the descriptions of the toy market in Vienna and the climax set at a masquerade ball. There is also the inevitable quest, which takes Picard to Nuremburg, Vienna, and remote districts of Hungary.
Feeling bewitched by feelings of dread and fear of his own demise, he finds himself in odd interviews with a hashish-smoking police chief, a kindly Gepetto-like toymaker, and a primitive family in rural Hungary. These evocative passages reminded PI Lew Archer’s quests for information in Ross Macdonald’s crime novels.
Not being a reader of fantasy, I have no feeling for whether knowledgeable fantasy fans would like this 1977 novel. I’m confident that mystery fans who are looking for something different will probably like it. Kotzwinkle writes plain English, able to get across the uncanny without resorting to over the top language. He follows the conventions of a mystery fairly. Plus, though the hero is insecure, middle-aged and overweight, he’s quite the hit with the ladies. I suspect this will console middle-aged and overweight male readers, though fans of erotica may find the sexy passages rather like alcohol-free beer.
Other books by William Kotzwinkle:
The Bear Went Over the Mountain
The World Is Big and I’m So Small
Ahh, one of my favorite authors, I didn’t know he wrote books with main characters not named Walter :-0
FWIW, this is one of my all-time favorite novels. HIGHLY recommended.
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[…] in Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose. The phantasmagoric atmosphere as in William Kotzwinkle’s Fata Morgana. The unreliability of an unsympathetic narrator – well, name your favorite modernist writer from […]