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At its most basic level, *** is a detective story. Stu Pott, the naive and sentimental hero, ends up (thanks to the collusion of a jealous wife, a rapacious mistress and a horde of snakily ambitious hangers-on) unjustly accused of the murder of his master, towering captain of industry and maker of ***.

But the book reveals itself to be much more than a detective story, and much more than a sly critique of capitalist society - although it is those things as well. This novel is "after far bigger game than the identity of some culprit," as Brodsky says. A triumph of post-modern literature, *** is both baroque and machine-like in its precise use of language, an intricate dissection of the nature and process of the story, and storytelling, itself.

By turns witty, despairing, and profound in a way no other living writer can match - "one of the most important writers working today" (Library Journal) - Michael Brodsky, with an ever-expanding body of work, is justly referred to as shouldering fully in his turn the burden of fearless exploration assumed by Kafka, by Joyce, and by Beckett.