What is one supposed to like about this book? I think the answer is the postmodernism — sure, the book-within-a-book is interesting in theory, and there are some clever comments on the genre writ large (the narrator's complaints about the fictional author's writing quirks, or the use of other detective writers' names). But postmodernism for its own sake is hollow, and hollow is exactly how I would describe this book: six hundred pages that could be half that. So many worthless discourses, so many dead ends, such bad prose, and the final outcome being a handful of twists that feel cheap rather than clever.

★★