Mr. Flood's Last Resort

Irish magical realism saturates this double mystery with saints, mistaken identities, and a hoarder's creepy house. Maud Drennan is assigned to attend an elderly man, Cathal Flood, listed as challenging, having chased away the last caregiver sent to his house. Behind the piles of abandoned objects and dirt, past a solid wall of National Geographic magazines, is an uncluttered space filled instead with mostly grotesque curiosities and automata that are lavishly described. As the tale unfolds, saints make appearances and converse, people are not whom they claim to be, and clues to disappearances show up in unlikely ways. The peculiar nature of the Flood family is gradually exposed but in a distorted and disjointed manner that is very much like reality. The tragic disappearance of Maud's sister is less fully resolved, with the book concluding with Maud setting off to find her.