THE EXQUISITE, by Laird Hunt

(originally posted on September 20, 2006)

This is so, so my kind of book. A broken young man gets mixed up with a shadowy underground group - headed by the mysterious Aris Kindt - to perform staged murders upon those hoping to feel something, anything in the aftermath of 9/11. And that's only scratching the surface of this dreamlike phantasm of a novel that perches itself on the edge of a surface brimming with uncertainty and even madness.