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The Facades: A Novel
In the once-great Midwestern city of Trude, ornate old buildings lie in ruins, shrouded in disappointment and nostalgia. Trude has become a place to "lose yourself," as one tourist brochure puts it: a treacherous maze of convoluted shopping malls, barricaded libraries, and elitist assisted-living homes.
One night at Trude's opera house, the theater's most celebrated mezzo-soprano vanishes during rehearsal. When the police come up empty-handed, her husband, a disconsolate legal clerk named Sven Norberg, takes up the quest on his own. To uncover the secret of his wife's disappearance, Norberg must descend into Trude's underworld and confront the menacing and bizarre citizens of his hometown: rebellious librarians, shifty music critics, a cop known as the Oracle, and the minister of an apocalyptic church who has recruited Norberg's teenage son. Faced with the loss of everything he loves, Norberg's investigation leads him to the heart of the city and through the buildings of a possibly insane modernist architect named Bernhard, whose elaborate vision offers him an astonishing revelation.
Written with boundless intelligence and razor-sharp wit, THE FACADES is a comic and existential mystery that unfolds at the urgent pace of a thriller.