The Adventures of Inspector Canal

Psychoanalysts make the best detectives! When it comes to divining motives, deciphering ambiguous pronouncements, detecting delusions, and foiling the tricks memory plays, famed French analyst Jacques Lacan—turned self-proclaimed retired Inspector Quesjac Canal—is second to none (apologies to Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot, Edgar Allen Poe's Dupin, and Umberto Eco's William of Baskerville). Reluctantly drawn into helping hapless New York City police detectives with crimes reported by luminaries like Rolland Saalem, music director of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, and involving prominent personages like Tobias Trickler, Mayor of New York City, and Sandra Errand, vice president for North American sales at YVEH Distributors of Spirits, Canal solves cases that are anything but what they appear to be and mends tears of the heart and soul at the same time. The Adventures of Inspector Canal includes three intrigues that weave together psychoanalytic themes, historical mysteries, and contemporary issues in a unique manner. In “The Case of the Lost Object,” the conductor of the New York Philharmonic becomes obsessed about the theft from his Lincoln Center office of the slow movement from a precious original musical score. In “The Case of the Pirated Formula,” a hard-charging businesswoman is determined to stop a Chinese counterfeit version of the famous green Chartreuse liqueur her company distributes from flooding the American market. Finally, in “The Case of the Liquidity Squeeze,” the sex life of the beloved mayor of New York City becomes fodder for public consumption and derision when he is accused of paying for his visits to a so-called massage parlor from public coffers. The psychoanalytic themes of love, desire, and loss intertwine as important relationships develop between Canal and those he assists.