One of my all time favorite writers, Robert Coover, has a new book coming out in about two weeks called Noir. It’s a detective novel written in the second person. Say what you will about writing in the second person, I’m super excited to see what Coover does with this puppy.

You can read an excerpt at Vice.

You can listen to Coover read from the book and answer some questions via Kelly Writers House.

Here’s a blurb from Ben Marcus:

“At age 75, Coover is still a brilliant mythmaker, a potty-mouthed Svengali, and an evil technician of metaphors. He is among our language’s most important inventors.”

Here’s the summary:

You are Philip M. Noir, Private Investigator. A mysterious young widow hires you to find her husband’s killer-if he was killed. Then your client is killed and her body disappears-if she was your client. Your search for clues takes you through all levels of the city, from classy lounges to lowlife dives, from jazz bars to a rich sex kitten’s bedroom, from yachts to the morgue. “The Case of the Vanishing Black Widow” unfolds over five days aboveground and three or four in smugglers’ tunnels, though flashback and anecdote, and expands time into something much larger. You don’t always get the joke, though most people think what’s happening is pretty funny.