Good book.

The Curious Eat Themselves, by Jon Straley*

"She had the wobble-necked look of a self-aware drunk who fully understands reality is basically an ironic joke that no one else gets. She looked around at the early morning crowd and announced, 'I need a line of cocaine as long and fat as my arm and I'll do anything to get it.'

"I have since learned that in the terminology of the recovery movement this is called being 'really fucked up.'"

--A description of the narrator's ex, who's now a born-again Christian social worker.

This is a murder mystery/detective novel. I liked it--okay, mostly I ate up the style and didn't worry about the who dunnit, so I can't say whether it was all that hard to solve or not, and it's not one of the immortal novels whose main character will live on through the ages, but I liked it. Satisfying and writerly. A good book.

*The title comes from a line of poetry by Roethke, The Proverbs of Purgatory.**
**I didn't just know this. I looked it up. My coworkers have developed the idea that I am the font of all trivia. Dude. If they only knew my friends.