THE LAST WORDS OF JAMES JOYCE

A novel explores the ramifications of uncovering a lost work by one of the 20th century’s most influential writers.

Russell Padget, an embittered academic, sees a chance at literary fame when a disgraced Ph.D. student, Augustine Hiatt, asks for his help authenticating a stunning discovery. The find is a poem by James Joyce hidden in letters that the author wrote for years to his daughter, Lucia, a patient at a psychiatric hospital. Hiatt also attracts the attention of Beth and Todd Lawson, founders of a Christian cult called Friend to Man, who take offense at his moonlighting as a porn scriptwriter and begin sending threatening letters. When events take a tragic turn, police detective Alana Stamos must piece together what happened while she grapples with a key question: Could a lost Joycean manuscript be reason enough for murder? Broderick, who previously wrote a literary companion to Joyce’s work, James Joyce(2018), uses his expertise to create a moving portrait of Lucia, whose sections are among the most compelling in the novel. Flashbacks and personal letters present her as a smart, artistic woman with a unique voice, deeply devoted to her father. Close attention to biographical details also makes the lost manuscript—titled Archimedes at the Gear Fair, a “mini-epic about the development of life in the sea”—seem a plausible literary sensation. Unfortunately, the story doesn’t remain in the striking academic world, full of its own intrigues and villains, but keeps adding genres and plotlines to confusing effect. Many characters remain one-dimensional, subject to the whims and turns of the plot. This is the case with the Lawson siblings, who represent a caricature of zealots, down to incomprehensible reasoning, a vaguely incestuous bond, and a flair for the dramatic. The highlight of their subplot is a live broadcast of a crucifixion that bears no relation to the main events of the tale. Even characters with real depth and arresting backstories—like Stamos’ partner, Desi Arroyo, who lost a brother in a homophobic hate crime tragedy—stay on the sidelines, unsure of how they fit into the book.

A captivating literary mystery that turns into an over-the-top whodunit.