Liquidambar combines the atmosphere of Philip Marlowe’s adventures with the characters in Edward Hopper’s paintings to create a surprisingly fresh detective mystery.Typo Blod, a reluctant investigator, is dragged into the world of Hopper’s paintings where he’s compelled to solve the disappearance of beautiful Ellen Bogen.When journalist Blod encounters a stranger on public transport, he becomes absorbed by Hopper’s paintings like a fly in amber.Time halts at the instant depicted in Hopper’s most famous works and Blod’s world is thrown out of kilter. In a city tantalisingly part historical, part fantastical, Blod falls in love with Ellen Bogen, subject of Hopper’s Summertime.As Blod struggles to persuade a magazine editor to commission some articles from him, he encounters the homeless C.O. Jones begging on a commuter train. Jones claims to be trapped in a “vicious circle” and shows Blod a book that causes Blod to slip through a crack in reality and find himself driving along a road nothing to do with the city in which he lives.A gas station attendant fills his car’s tank with “liquid amber”, and directs him towards Fulcrum. Here, Jones re-appears to provoke Blod with questions about distant memories.However, Blod’s answers propel him along an increasingly bizarre storyline; a world of disappearances, slipshod kidnapping plots, slapdash conspiracies, an evil clown and possible murder.By its culmination, Blod realises his experiences have taught him to better appreciate the “liquid amber” of the present moment.“Liquidambar: It’s as if Philip Marlowe has stumbled down the Lost Highway into Gormenghast, hunting for The Girl With The Pearl Earring.” Jonas Wheeler, CitySidewalk
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