Ded, our main character, attends a flight where an unexpected murder happens. Ickey Jerusalem is found dead in the airplane’s toilets, suffocated and with a bag around his head. The door is locked from the inside so it initially seems like a suicide, but is it really? A series of interrogations take place, and we follow the mystery unsolving step by step. The life insurance that was recently bought for the victim raises questions on the incident. The questioning starts steady and is very interesting and nothing unusual, until you start to be confused. No, not in a bad way, and I will explain what I mean. At some point, the suspects start to appear as animals, and you get quite lost regarding what’s happening, and why. This is where some previous knowledge on William Blake can be useful – the book is highly affected by his art, and I have to admit you can lose some of the references if you’re not familiar with it. Personally I didn’t find this to be an obstacle, as the book can be interpreted as an hyper realistic story, that gave off strong Franz Kafka “the metamorphosis” vibes. However, I can see that fans of Blake would be even more excited to read this story and would get so much more of it compared to ignorant me. Another thing I consider worth mentioning, is the writer’s apology for the difficult names in the beginning of the book; for me this wasn’t an issue, and I wouldn’t have even thought of it if the author’s note wasn’t there. I believe that the way characters were given made them distinguishable, thus I didn’t struggle to remember them.

My only reason for not rating it with 5 stars was the confusion allegory caused me at times, and the occasional sexual references that felt off-putting and which in my understanding didn’t add to the plot. All in all, I enjoyed trying to figure out the mystery and how I felt I had to untangle every piece of it, as the story didn’t give away the truth as easily as it often happens in mysteries.