The Monkey's Mask

This book is a traditional, hardboiled mystery about a young poet that goes missing at a writing program in Australia…except the whole thing is written in verse. It’s laugh-out-loud funny, mournful, insightful, and full of sinister characters like poetry professors who go on too long at readings.

It’s the kind of book you can read in an afternoon, though certain lines and images from the various poems have stayed with me long after. It also includes an Australian dictionary at the back with words like “lairy,” which means “visually loud; excruciatingly colorful.” What a word. Don’t tell the poets.