Book Review: Fata Morgana is a mirage, an illusion. Which is the story of Paul Picard, the bear-like detective who relentlessly pursues his quarry while trying and failing to live life to the fullest. I'm not much of one for the supernatural but this story won me over. While not as layered as an onion, the novel is more subtle than it first seems and in the end there's a life-affirming moral with a comment on when duty outwears common sense. Kotzwinkle makes the historical narrative, the magic and mysticism, the larger than life characters in Fata Morgana seem effortless. He powerfully evokes the time and place, the exotic and erotic, the appealing character of this lumbering ursine policeman as he jostles through the demimonde. Kotzwinkle is the ultimate professional and facile writer, but there's more here than meets the eye. He really should be better known, but he writes in a wide variety of genres with no two novels are alike -- in fact they're widely divergent. He writes children's stories, adult novels, novelizations, and always seems to have a bit of tongue in cheek, while his writing is so facile, florid, and fluid that one hesitates to look for depth, which is there hovering just below the surface. Fata Morgana is a fantastical romp that entertains on a high level. [5★]
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