The Philosophical Detective

Swallow Tail Press (June 2014)
Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1967. Nick Martin has just started graduate school when he’s dragooned into serving as the driver, guide and confidant of a blind poet by the name of Jorge Luis Borges. Together they must address an extraordinary series of crimes and the equally baffling conundrums of literature and philosophy, including Zeno’s paradoxes, the mind/body problem, and the mysteries of destiny, personal identity and artistic creation. Nick plays the parts of Watson, Sancho Panza, Dante and Stephen Daedalus, and before the story ends he hears the last tale of Scheherazade and finds the love of his life. Forty-five years later, struggling with pain and grief, he looks back with wonder at the magical year when he wandered into the labyrinth and took his first steps to self-understanding.

Lighthearted but deeply serious, The Philosophical Detective is a unique journey into the visionary world of a genius.

Kirkus Reviews called The Philosophical Detective “…a suspenseful, pitch-perfect novel with an unlikely lead detective: a fictionalized version of iconic Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986)…. [T]he author’s fine-tuned intellect and vivid reimagining of Borges make for a thought-provoking and compelling read. … An intelligent, original detective novel.”