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An investigation into more than crime

The principle aim for any author is to make their story interesting to the reader. This may seem obvious, but so often this goal succumbs to the writer's desire to create something earth-shaking. Powerful themes, complex imagery and vivid metaphor suddenly take precedence. The story may contain all of these, but how efficacious is it when the reader is distanced from the action either because it's not accessible or simply because they just stop caring?

"The story is not in the words; it's in the struggle," says the narrator in one of the stories in Paul Auster's "The New York Trilogy" (Penguin, $14.95). It neatly sums up a central theme in the three analogous stories in this book in which the classic mystery genre is used to investigate the phenomenon of what a story is and how through it the real can become unreal, the unreal real, the creation the creator and the creator the creation. By reading it, we get the sense that the struggle referred to not only embodies the struggles of the characters but also the struggle the author undergoes in creating something of which he is so much a part.

In "City of Glass," the first installment, Quinn is a mystery writer who, because of an eerie phone call, assumes the identity of Paul Auster, a New York detective. Later, Auster is hired to protect an adult son from his father, both named Peter Stillman, because his theories on salvation have become so real to him that he is accused of being psychotic and dangerous. Very quickly Quinn/Paul Auster becomes obsessed with the case as it introduces complexities that eventually change his life.

During the second part called "Ghosts," private detective Blue is hired by White to watch Black. Although no reason is given, he agrees to the job and in his room on Orange Street he watches and waits. Like the other two stories, no crime is apparent and none arises, but the investigation is just as thrilling and the revelations just as chilling.

The narrator in "The Locked Room," Trilogy's final installment, discovers his childhood friend Fanshawe has suddenly disappeared.

Pursuant to his wishes, Fanshawe's wife contacts the narrator, a book reviewer and freelance writer, and presents him with numerous manuscripts of books, poems and plays that Fanshawe had completed before his disappearance. Recognizing the brilliance of these works, his main objective is to get these published and into the hands of the public, but quickly he becomes fixated on finding Fanshawe and loses sight of himself in the search.

Within the first few pages of "City of Glass," Auster writes of Quinn, "What interested him about the stories he wrote was not their relation to the world, but their relation to other stories." After reading "The New York Trilogy," perhaps the same argument can be made for Paul Auster. The interrelation among the three different plots is striking and causes us to examine them as one piece, just as a detective would examine a crucial clue. Together they not only examine the power of story, but also demonstrate this power, dramatically affecting the readers as they piece together the information to form the whole picture.

Brilliantly written, the individual stories offer an excitement not found in other crime fiction, holding us spellbound. As obsessed as Quinn/Paul Auster is in watching Peter Stillman, as obsessed as Blue is in watching Black or as the narrator of "The Locked Room" is in finding Fanshawe, so too does the reader feel that same obsession in watching these characters. This is a book to be read as a whole. Forget the fact that it's three different stories. Only by looking at one as a continuation of the other can the entirety of the message be found.