{"id":309912,"date":"2026-04-23T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/electricliterature.com\/?p=309912"},"modified":"2026-04-22T12:17:23","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T16:17:23","slug":"the-deepest-readers-do-not-make-the-best-detectives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/electricliterature.com\/the-deepest-readers-do-not-make-the-best-detectives\/","title":{"rendered":"The Deepest Readers Do Not Make the Best Detectives\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Patrick Cottrell\u2019s second novel Afternoon Hours of a Hermit<\/em> <\/a>begins with a mysterious envelope delivered in the mail; inside is a childhood photograph of the narrator\u2019s deceased brother, sent just as the fifth anniversary of his suicide approaches. It is the kind of inciting incident that carries all the scaffolding of a detective story\u2014a mystery to be solved, a past event reopened under the promise of yielding not just new information but some deeper understanding. However, this is not your typical detective novel: Cottrell resists the genre\u2019s usual pleasures of discovery and resolution; questions are left unanswered, and the truth is partial or ambiguous, if it\u2019s uncovered at all. <\/p>\n\n\n

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The novel follows writer Dan Moran as he returns to his childhood home in the Midwest in search of answers about the circumstances of his brother\u2019s life and suicide. His family is surprised to see him, even as they prepare a memorial for his brother\u2014one that Dan was not invited to attend. Unfazed, or perhaps simply accustomed to his ostracism as a trans Asian adoptee, Dan forges ahead with his investigation. From the outset, it is clear that Dan is spectacularly ill-suited to the task\u2014he misreads clues, follows dead ends, and cannot seem to stay on track. It is important to note that Dan doesn\u2019t simply consider himself a detective, but rather a \u201cmetaphysical investigator,\u201d a designation that shifts the terms of the inquiry from facts to interpretation. More than that, the term signals Cottrell\u2019s larger project, which lies not necessarily in arriving at answers but in the act of reading deeply<\/em>. In both Afternoon Hours of a Hermit<\/em> and Cottrell\u2019s first novel, Sorry to Disrupt the Peace<\/a><\/em>, there\u2019s a strong extra-literary dimension: Sorry to Disrupt the Peace <\/em>is filled with direct quotations from well-known authors, and Afternoon Hours of a Hermit<\/em> similarly weaves in references to writers like Thomas Bernhard and W.G. Sebald. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moreover, Cottrell\u2019s characters are marked with bibliophilic tendencies. At one point Dan thinks, \u201cMy constant curiosity got in the way of my suicide,\u201d a line that reads as his own but is in fact a direct quotation from Bernhard\u2019s The <\/a>Loser<\/a>. <\/em>Dan doesn\u2019t simply think about<\/em> his life; he thinks through<\/em> literature. It is no surprise that a reader like Dan would be drawn to detective work\u2014they are engaged in similar pursuits, trying to locate truth, to distinguish between what one thinks and what one knows. In this way, Dan Moran\u2019s investigation stages a kind of deep reading of his brother, yes, but also of himself, probing the gap between reality and how one is perceived. This foregrounds a central tension of the novel form\u2014and of reading itself: the desire to enter another consciousness, and the impossibility of ever fully doing so. If Afternoon Hours of a Hermit<\/em> reveals anything, it is that truly knowing another person is the greatest mystery of all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Patrick and I spent a few weeks exchanging emails about detective stories, metafictional doubling, lessons drawn from Thomas Bernhard, and more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Evander James Reyes: This novel leans into the detective\/noir genre, but Dan Moran is\u2014there\u2019s no other way to say this\u2014a terrible detective! What draws you to the detective story and how are you interested in playing with\/against expectations?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Patrick Cottrell<\/strong>: The word that comes to mind for me is atmosphere. Rain, fog, cars. I grew up in Milwaukee and I don\u2019t remember many sunny days. I wanted to conjure the mystery\/noir atmosphere which means driving around at night, spying on people, questioning them, showing up at places you\u2019re not supposed to, but I didn\u2019t want to be beholden to managing all the plot conventions. The noir genre seems to be about justice so there\u2019s some added propulsion on a narrative level, but that\u2019s also where the humor comes in. Sometimes the most justice-inclined people are also the most delusional and the least self-aware. Dan Moran believes he is attempting to restore justice by writing his psychological thriller, but in reality, what is he doing? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Frustration and humor go hand in hand.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

For me the ending was the most important part of the book and I really struggled with it for a long time. I had to do a major rewrite that involved deleting multiple chapters. When I landed on this ending, I felt a huge sense of relief because I believe it works. I don\u2019t think it answers things in a tidy, traditional mystery sense, but I deeply believe in it on an emotional and gut level. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

EJR: Did you have any detective stories in mind while you were drafting this book? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

PC<\/strong>: I\u2019m indebted to the blurbs in Olga Tokarczuk\u2019s Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead<\/a>. <\/em>I hadn\u2019t read it at the time, but I read the blurbs and something about them made me want to write the book they were describing: private, existential, a fairy tale, philosophical. I tried to imagine what that book could be. The blurbs were actually inspiring which is weird to say. Drive Your Plow<\/em> is an off-kilter mystery. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another detective influence is Bennett Sim\u2019s story \u201cThe Postcard.\u201d I love how he refuses to explain the circumstances of what his narrator is doing, the set-up is fairly vague and mysterious in a purposeful, ominous way. Of course, Kobo Abe was a master at refusing to explain things. It can be frustrating for the reader, but there\u2019s something productive about the frustration. Marie NDiaye\u2019s My Heart Hemmed In<\/a> <\/em>is not a traditional detective story, but the protagonist is trying to find out why she and her husband have been (seemingly overnight) shunned by their community. It\u2019s a psychological horror novel. The protagonist sets off on an investigation of sorts through her city while her husband is bed-ridden with a festering wound. NDiaye\u2019s imagination is boundless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

EJR: Dan Moran\u2019s decisions often feel frustrating, even self-sabotaging, but they also seem to drive the novel forward. What do you think about frustration as an engine in the book?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

PC<\/strong>: Frustration is always part of the mechanics of plot: someone wants something and they face obstacles or they get in their own way and this pushes the story forward. I\u2019m never thinking about plot when I\u2019m writing though. I am mostly thinking about humor, or whatever\u2019s funny to me on the page (I honestly don\u2019t know what\u2019s funny to other people). Frustration and humor go hand in hand. If you\u2019re not a particularly plot-driven writer, you have to find other ways and means to move the book forward. Claire-Louise Bennett is good at that. I always want to stay in her world even though she\u2019s never beholden to plot. She conjures a particular mood or atmosphere via her sometimes-outlandish, embroidered sentences. Caren Beilin does this, too. Sometimes if I\u2019m stuck, I go back to Amina Cain\u2019s description of narrative<\/a>: \u201c[ . . . ] when objects and characters, and also landscapes, appear together, that is how narrative happens for me.\u201d Amina Cain\u2019s work is always a guiding light.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I see that my book is made up of other books and writers and it seems silly to ignore that fact or avoid it.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

EJR: The title <\/strong>Afternoon Hours of a Hermit <\/em><\/strong>exists both as the book we\u2019re reading and as a book the narrator abandoned writing\u2014what drew you to this doubling?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

PC<\/strong>: I think it was a self-serious conceit that\u2019s supposed to be absurd and funny. The narrator seems to take writing seriously but at the same time erases and abandons what he\u2019s doing, as you\u2019ve rightly pointed out. I enjoy the game within the game, the little corners where you can play around to see what you can get away with. I love doubles, twins, doppelg\u00e4ngers, mirrors, etc. because I feel as if, when I was adopted, I myself was doubled in some way\u2014when I was adopted, it\u2019s almost as if there were two directions my life could have gone and it went one particular way, but then there\u2019s the shadow of other possibilities. And transitioning, there\u2019s another doubling, but not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

EJR: Another doubling: In <\/strong>Afternoon Hours<\/em><\/strong>, Dan Moran is the author of your first novel, <\/strong>Sorry to Disrupt the Peace<\/em><\/strong>. I find this ontological weirdness really intriguing! It creates a strange loop of interpretation\u2014when I went back to <\/strong>Sorry to Disrupt the Peace<\/em><\/strong>, I could only read it through the Dan Moran of <\/strong>Afternoon Hours<\/em><\/strong>. The same text exists in two contexts at once. What kind of textual game are you playing with that move?!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

PC<\/strong>: I love that! I think that\u2019s really cool and funny. Yeah, it\u2019s a weird meta-fictional game. I wanted to try to establish that the world of this book, Afternoon Hours,<\/em> is not unfolding in the same world as the first book. When I first started writing this book, I had the idea that the narrator would transition in between books. I had never heard of anyone doing that or exploring that. But, I wanted to do that in an indirect way. So, is the Afternoon Hours<\/em> narrator the same character in the first book, pre-transition, or a fictional invention of Dan Moran? Again, it\u2019s a hall of mirrors. I like that the books can exist on two different planes of reality. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Someone asked if this is a sequel or if I simply rewrote my first book with a trans narrator. Absolutely not. But I understand why a person would ask that or think that, I really do: suicide, siblings, Korean adoptees, returning home, detectives, etc. Honestly, I think a lot of what I was thinking about with Dan Moran (as the author of Sorry to Disrupt the Peace<\/em>) goes back to the fact that my former name will always be tethered to my first book. I wanted to reclaim it with a new name, in a sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also want to put in a good word for McSweeney\u2019s here. Perhaps some of the larger publishers can pulp backstock, reprint copies with a new name, and take the financial loss, but McSweeney\u2019s is a small non-profit organization and they did the right thing and reprinted my book with my name on it. I\u2019ve always felt deeply grateful for them, especially Amanda Uhle and Rita Bullwinkel, both amazing authors. They get it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ER: What draws you to characters whose relationship to literature is so immersive?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

PC<\/strong>: A novel can be a vehicle or container of influence, conversation, and perception. The novel as a form is so capacious. I mostly write to be in conversation with other writers, their traditions, techniques and so on. I spend more time reading than writing. Even though I love writing, I don\u2019t do it every day, but I read every day (for work and for my own purposes). When I was in high school, I didn\u2019t have many friends but I spent a lot of time reading and going to bookstores. Friday nights, two friends and I would go to Barnes and Noble or Half Price Books and browse and sit on the floor and read. So to answer your question, I guess I see that my book is made up of other books and writers and it seems silly to ignore that fact or avoid it. I feel hopeful that this acknowledgement adds depth to the narrative and some minor excitement. When I read Bola\u00f1o, I\u2019m always excited to read the writers he mentions. I suppose these mentions of other writers also situate my book in the real world, half-in, half-out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Writing doesn\u2019t get easier; I think it gets harder because you expect it to get easier the more you do it, but it actually doesn\u2019t.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

ER: What is your relationship to Thomas Bernhard? I notice certain stylistic echoes\u2014repetition, the constant returning to earlier thoughts and images, which take on different valences as the novel unfolds. At the same time, this novel doesn\u2019t read to me as a strictly \u201cBernhardian\u201d rant\u2014how do you see your work in relation to his, and where do you feel it diverges?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

PC<\/strong>: I\u2019ve read some of the writers who mimic his voice on a syntactical level and I really enjoy those books. But . . . that\u2019s not really what I\u2019m trying to do at all. I think what Bernhard offers me (as a writer) is permission to sidestep descriptions of physical movement and descriptions of people\u2019s physical appearances, which I\u2019ve always had trouble with. A character can spend pages upon pages physically static but Bernhard creates a mood and atmosphere that\u2019s addictive, so as a reader I don\u2019t care if the character is moving through the world or not. My greatest affinity with him is a way of viewing the world. You understand that at their most basic, people can be incredibly grotesque, selfish, small-minded, and cruel. And the world continues to become more absurd by the day. And yet, there\u2019s compassion in his books, they\u2019re not heartless. To be Bernhardian, you have to have an eye (and ear) for absurdity. He is truly a very comic writer. His sense of humor holds up, it\u2019s not dated at all. About divergence, that\u2019s an interesting question. I might be more aligned with the detective\/noir genre although The Lime Works<\/em> <\/a>could be considered a crime novel, I guess. I could talk about him a lot. Once you know his tricks and techniques, you can spot his influence everywhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

EJR: It\u2019s been about eight years since <\/strong>Sorry to Disrupt the Peace<\/em><\/strong>\u2014how did writing <\/strong>Afternoon Hours <\/em><\/strong>feel different this time around?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

PC<\/strong>: It took a lot longer. I\u2019m older and slow. I felt blocked for a while because I needed things in my personal life to settle down. During that time, I would write little stories here and there and interview other writers. Writing doesn\u2019t get easier; I think it gets harder because you expect it to get easier the more you do it, but it actually doesn\u2019t, at least not for me. The only time I feel writing is relatively easy is when I\u2019m working on a really short story, and that\u2019s because my short stories are so short, they\u2019re probably closer to prose poems.<\/p>\n\n\n