Beneath the Neon Egg

The uneven final installment of Kennedy’s Copenhagen Quartet is shaped by the winter season and structured with inspiration from John Coltrane’s jazz album “A Love Supreme,” whose track titles it reprises as the names of the novel’s four distinct parts. American expat Patrick “Blue” Bluett makes his living translating Danish documents into English. The divorced father of two grown children, Blue spends his free time listening to jazz, drinking in Copenhagen’s watering holes, and fumbling for real connection amid fleeting encounters. When his closest friend and neighbor, Sam Finglas, confides that he has found rapture with a Russian girlfriend, Blue is envious. His curiosity grows when he glimpses the couple entering the mysterious Satin Club. Preoccupied with his new lover, Liselotte, Blue barely registers Sam’s deepening dismay, until he learns that his friend has died in an apparent suicide. What Blue discovers in the aftermath of his friend’s death changes his vision of Sam and of his own life. Music is richly woven throughout the tale, and the sights and sounds of wintry Copenhagen are lyrically evoked. But while Sam’s story wraps emotional pathos in gritty, noir-flavored suspense, Blue’s aimlessness flattens the larger narrative. Too often, momentum stalls amid jejune philosophizing (“Do I like existing? Would I prefer not to?”) and exhaustive accounts of unremarkable days. [em]Agent: Nat Sobel, Sobel Weber Associates. (Aug.) [/em]