SECRET DEAD MEN

A roguish freelance sleuth is a master of disguise in a literally mind-boggling way.

Swierczynski’s riotous crime novel, first published in 2004, begins typically enough, with a pair of FBI agents poring over the scene of a double homicide in Woody Creek, Illinois, in the mid-1970s. The puckish narrator, Special Agent Kevin Kennedy, even cradles a doughnut and a Styrofoam cup of lukewarm coffee. But the story goes deliriously wonky and never looks back when Kennedy confides in the reader that his real name is Del Farmer and he’s a “soul collector.” Del stores his stolen souls in his Brain Hotel, a series of “rooms” in his brain. The residents there seem to have settled in comfortably, occasionally offering him assistance. The latest soul belongs to Brad Larsen, one of the two murder victims. Swierczynski pulls off a tricky balancing act. Even as he methodically lays out the rules and details of his offbeat premise, he keeps the plot grounded in the conventions of the crime genre, which require Del to find the killers of Larsen and his wife, Alison. Additionally, Del finds himself a hunted man, runs afoul of a femme fatale, and faces off against The Association, a fiendish criminal enterprise. Swierczynski’s brisk pace and light comic touch often resemble vintage Donald Westlake. Many of the funniest bits are tossed-off riffs, as when a ragtag group of souls in one room of his Brain Hotel watch an episode of The Bionic Woman.

A delicious comic thriller with a science-fiction twist.