Clearly this author is trying to do something a little different within the mystery genre. Not knowing that, I found the book so irritating that I stopped midway and looked it up online. Readers either loved it or hated it, but since some of them loved it, I was encouraged to finish the book.
The story is of a failing writer, and his competition with another, more successful, writer with whom he went to college, and the depression and feelings of faillure that haunt both of them. It is a very dark, almost nihilistic book; no one gets out unscathed. The experimental approach of the author is to make it look like first one, then another, of the characters committed the murder: the other writer, the grad student factotum, the photojournalist, the cop? There is no ending to give away because the murder is never solved.
For me, this was a very unsatisfying read. The sentences are convoluted, the dialogue is confusing, and sometimes the meaning is obscure. However, clearly other readers loved this book, and I do applaud any experimentation in a genre that has become so formulaic that it is almost a joke. However, for me, it''s a D. Read some other reviews before you try it, to get a more fair picture.