ASGARD PARK

A thriller set in 1991 focuses on the director of a mental hospital.

Say his name: Heimdallr. From Albania and lower Bavaria to upstate New York, the site of a mental hospital, this densely plotted novel is all over the map and resists an easy synopsis (but in a good way). In Albania, a beautiful widow defies attempts to compel her to become a sex worker for a better lifestyle. A Canadian mining director with suspect intentions hires her as a translator. Things go south quickly, leading readers to Birger Wallenberg, the recently hired director of the Asgard Park Institute for the Criminally Insane. En route by plane, he has a dream of using a remote probe that allows its user to access a psychotherapist’s patient’s mind and to experience what the person sees, feels, and thinks. In his dream, he enters a distant host, a woman who at that moment is flushing down a toilet $10 million worth of crack cocaine that a crime kingpin wants back, instigating the first crisis of Wallenberg’s directorship. In the real world, a schizophrenic from the institute escapes and murders two assailants sent to menace the woman, who’s a well-known scientist, and her 6-year-old daughter. And then things take a mythic turn: Wallenberg meets the institute’s former director, who warns him: “I brought you to Asgard Park for a purpose that is not to your liking.” Meaning Wallenberg must become “the chosen watchman; the vessel of Heimdallr, the god in Nordic mythology credited with social order on Earth.” Simonar has crafted a true What the Heck narrative that expands to include Burton Crane, “a roving troubleshooter,” investigating growing suspicions of “a secret empire out there…the world’s greatest conspiracy to defraud humankind.” The ambitious book is divided into four parts, and it can be easy to lose the thread as the story jumps to new perspectives. But patient and attentive readers will be rewarded when the intriguing strands come together. What keeps the pages turning is best summed up by one character’s declaration: “Wonders never cease at Asgard Park.”

A complex, bonkers, and bracing conspiracy tale for adventurous readers.