The Case Of The Imaginary Detective - Tapa blanda

A brilliantly comic and intelligent literary mystery from Karen Joy Fowler, the bestselling Man Booker shortlisted author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

Rima Lanisell has a habit of losing things - car keys, sunglasses, lovers, family members. Following the death of Rima's father, she goes to stay with her godmother Addison, a wildly successful, albeit eccentric, mystery writer. Addison's beach house seems the place to make sense of Rima's loss, yet she is soon caught up in a mystery of her own. Who stole a small and highly valuable object from Addison's kitchen? Why is Rima corresponding with an obsessive fan, using someone else's family name? Most importantly: what exactly was the relationship between Addison and Rima's father, and why did Addison name a murderer after him in one of her novels?

Karen Joy Fowler is the author of Sister Noon, Sarah Canary, The Sweetheart Season, The Jane Austen Book Club, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves and the short story collection Black Glass. She is a PEN/Faulkner prize finalist, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2014 and lives in California.

A young woman's search for the truth about her father's past . . .

When Rima Lanisell loses her father to cancer, her godmother
Addison's Californian beach house provides a strange and
fascinating refuge. Wit's End is a place littered with
miniature murder scenes - eerie doll's houses modelled on Addison's world-famous
mystery novels. It is also home to a gaggle of
misfits. There's Tilda, a New Age former alcoholic; her
ne'er-do-well son Martin; and Addison herself, who was
once close to Rima's father. And lurking somewhere in their
midst is the imaginary detective - Maxwell Lane - who has a
spellbinding appeal for his many, obsessive fans.

As Rima comes to terms with her grief and tries to understand
the relationship between Addison and her father, so she and her
new housemates become involved in a mystery of their own . . .

Praise for Karen Joy Fowler and The Jane Austen Book Club

'We defy you not to fall head over heels for this lovely novel'
Mail on Sunday

'If I could eat this novel, I would' Alice Sebold