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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.
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.
- GenresFictionPsychoanalysis
283 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2010
11 people are currently reading
113 people want to read
About the author
Bruce Fink
60 books165 followersBruce Fink is a practicing Lacanian psychoanalyst and analytic supervisor. He trained as a psychoanalyst in France for seven years with and is now a member of the psychoanalytic institute Jacques Lacan created shortly before his death, the École de la Cause freudienne in Paris, and obtained his Ph.D. from the Department of Psychoanalysis at the University of Paris VIII (Saint-Denis). He served as Professor of Psychology from 1993 to 2013 at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and is currently an affiliated member of the Pittsburgh Psychoanalytic Center.
Dr. Fink is the author of six books on Lacan (which have been translated into many different languages, including Spanish, Portuguese, German, Polish, Croatian, Greek, Turkish, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese):
• The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995)
• A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997)
• Lacan to the Letter: Reading Écrits Closely (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004)
• Fundamentals of Psychoanalytic Technique: A Lacanian Approach for Practitioners (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 2007)
• Against Understanding: Commentary, Cases, and Critique in a Lacanian Key, 2 volumes (London: Routledge, 2013-2014)
He has translated several of Lacan’s works, including:
• The Seminar, Book XX (1972-1973): Encore, On Feminine Sexuality: The Limits of Love and Knowledge (New York: Norton, 1998)
• Écrits: A Selection (New York: Norton, 2002)
• Écrits: The First Complete Edition in English (New York: Norton, 2006), for which he received the 2007 nonfiction translation prize from the French-American Foundation and the Florence Gould Foundation
• On the Names-of-the-Father (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013)
• The Triumph of Religion (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013)
• The Seminar, Book VIII: Transference (Cambridge: Polity Press, forthcoming)
He is also the coeditor of three collections on Lacan’s work published by SUNY Press:
• Reading Seminar XI: Lacan’s Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (1995)
• Reading Seminars I and II: Lacan’s Return to Freud (1996)
• Reading Seminar XX: Lacan’s Major work on Love, Knowledge, and Feminine Sexuality (2002)
He has presented his theoretical and clinical work at close to a hundred different conferences, psychoanalytic institutes, and universities in the U.S. and abroad since 1986.
In recent years, he has authored mysteries involving a character based on Jacques Lacan: The Adventures of Inspector Canal (London: Karnac, 2010, and translated into Finnish). A second volume, Death by Analysis, was published by Karnac in 2013, to be followed by two further mysteries in 2014 (The Purloined Love and Odor di Murderer).
Dr. Fink is the author of six books on Lacan (which have been translated into many different languages, including Spanish, Portuguese, German, Polish, Croatian, Greek, Turkish, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese):
• The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995)
• A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997)
• Lacan to the Letter: Reading Écrits Closely (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004)
• Fundamentals of Psychoanalytic Technique: A Lacanian Approach for Practitioners (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 2007)
• Against Understanding: Commentary, Cases, and Critique in a Lacanian Key, 2 volumes (London: Routledge, 2013-2014)
He has translated several of Lacan’s works, including:
• The Seminar, Book XX (1972-1973): Encore, On Feminine Sexuality: The Limits of Love and Knowledge (New York: Norton, 1998)
• Écrits: A Selection (New York: Norton, 2002)
• Écrits: The First Complete Edition in English (New York: Norton, 2006), for which he received the 2007 nonfiction translation prize from the French-American Foundation and the Florence Gould Foundation
• On the Names-of-the-Father (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013)
• The Triumph of Religion (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013)
• The Seminar, Book VIII: Transference (Cambridge: Polity Press, forthcoming)
He is also the coeditor of three collections on Lacan’s work published by SUNY Press:
• Reading Seminar XI: Lacan’s Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (1995)
• Reading Seminars I and II: Lacan’s Return to Freud (1996)
• Reading Seminar XX: Lacan’s Major work on Love, Knowledge, and Feminine Sexuality (2002)
He has presented his theoretical and clinical work at close to a hundred different conferences, psychoanalytic institutes, and universities in the U.S. and abroad since 1986.
In recent years, he has authored mysteries involving a character based on Jacques Lacan: The Adventures of Inspector Canal (London: Karnac, 2010, and translated into Finnish). A second volume, Death by Analysis, was published by Karnac in 2013, to be followed by two further mysteries in 2014 (The Purloined Love and Odor di Murderer).
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
May 18, 2010
This book contains 3 different stories - "The Case of the Lost Object", "The Case of the Pirated Formula", and "The Case of the Liquidity Squeeze".
Unfortunately, none of these stories has a plot that anybody would care about. The author fills his stories with expressions in French and doesn't bother to translate for the non-French speaking reader. The stories themselves, though well constructed, are just not that interesting. The author uses big words such as "autoclthonears", "crapulously", and "stesichorean palinode" and others but gives no clue as to what they mean. He has a poor depiction of accents, Yinz, anyt'ing, t'ought, dere, whild giving the same characters statements such as "cutting edge is my mantra". The stories are paded with information that is not generic to the storyline and the endings are contrived.
I cannot recommend this book to anyone except, perhaps, to the author's friends.
Unfortunately, none of these stories has a plot that anybody would care about. The author fills his stories with expressions in French and doesn't bother to translate for the non-French speaking reader. The stories themselves, though well constructed, are just not that interesting. The author uses big words such as "autoclthonears", "crapulously", and "stesichorean palinode" and others but gives no clue as to what they mean. He has a poor depiction of accents, Yinz, anyt'ing, t'ought, dere, whild giving the same characters statements such as "cutting edge is my mantra". The stories are paded with information that is not generic to the storyline and the endings are contrived.
I cannot recommend this book to anyone except, perhaps, to the author's friends.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 27, 2017
Fink's books on Lanian psychoanalysis are outstanding--well written and clear (not easy in this domain) while offering important explanations and arguments that don't try to water down psychoanalysis. And I'm a fan of just about all sub-genres of detective story. So I was hopeful, when I came across this book, that it might be the first time in the history of the genre that a "psychologist" (or psychoanalyst or phsychiatrist) detective actually had some real knowledge of the field, and put it to use in solving the mystery.
Canal does have all of Fink's knowledge of psychoanalytic theory, and displays it constantly...but there's not much in the way of detective story. The first story in rhis collection sounds like Fink really wanted to write a kind of forensic psychoanalysis of Mozart, without doing all the work, so he puts it in the mouth of a fictional character. It would be more interesting as an academic essay.
I was surprised by what a dreadful writer Fink turns out to be. His non-fiction is quite good, but these stories are painful to read, almost unreadable. It sounds like someone who has never actually read much fiction deciding to write some--and so deciding that affected and stilted prose just is what those "literary" types do. The kind of writing you get from teenagers who've read only about one short story all the way through, and think that in good writing characters never just say anything thing, they must "aver" or "interpolate" all the time. Or that a there are no women sitting on sofas, only luscious blondes draping their svelte forms voluptuously across velvet divans. All the characters are embarrassingly flat cliches, and, sorry to say, Fink comes off as some vulgar and insecure nouveau desperate to prove he's really superior to the great unwashed by childishly obsessing about how much he knows about wine and classical music. I seriously felt bad for his painful insecurity while reading these stories. A few more comments in the first one about how inferior Pittsburgh is to Paris, and I might not have finished.
The pointless use of odd French idioms is another example--none of them are necessary to the story, and they seem designed only to show off the author's command of the langauge. When Canal, at the end of a longish speech in English, adds a French idiom about an eel under the rock (which is not translated), it seems a desperate attempt to fit the idiom in--because in fact, it turns out there is NOT something "fishy" going on, and Canal doesn't really seem to think there is.
Really, painful to read, and a bit embarrassing. Although the insights into psychoanalytic theory are interesting, particularly the observations on Mozart. I don't imagine many readers will make it all the way these long stories (I found myself skimming by the time I got to the third). Personally, I'll stick with Simenon for now.
Canal does have all of Fink's knowledge of psychoanalytic theory, and displays it constantly...but there's not much in the way of detective story. The first story in rhis collection sounds like Fink really wanted to write a kind of forensic psychoanalysis of Mozart, without doing all the work, so he puts it in the mouth of a fictional character. It would be more interesting as an academic essay.
I was surprised by what a dreadful writer Fink turns out to be. His non-fiction is quite good, but these stories are painful to read, almost unreadable. It sounds like someone who has never actually read much fiction deciding to write some--and so deciding that affected and stilted prose just is what those "literary" types do. The kind of writing you get from teenagers who've read only about one short story all the way through, and think that in good writing characters never just say anything thing, they must "aver" or "interpolate" all the time. Or that a there are no women sitting on sofas, only luscious blondes draping their svelte forms voluptuously across velvet divans. All the characters are embarrassingly flat cliches, and, sorry to say, Fink comes off as some vulgar and insecure nouveau desperate to prove he's really superior to the great unwashed by childishly obsessing about how much he knows about wine and classical music. I seriously felt bad for his painful insecurity while reading these stories. A few more comments in the first one about how inferior Pittsburgh is to Paris, and I might not have finished.
The pointless use of odd French idioms is another example--none of them are necessary to the story, and they seem designed only to show off the author's command of the langauge. When Canal, at the end of a longish speech in English, adds a French idiom about an eel under the rock (which is not translated), it seems a desperate attempt to fit the idiom in--because in fact, it turns out there is NOT something "fishy" going on, and Canal doesn't really seem to think there is.
Really, painful to read, and a bit embarrassing. Although the insights into psychoanalytic theory are interesting, particularly the observations on Mozart. I don't imagine many readers will make it all the way these long stories (I found myself skimming by the time I got to the third). Personally, I'll stick with Simenon for now.
Want to read
June 16, 2010I'd love to read this book as I really enjoy psychological mystery books, and psychology books in general!
April 16, 2019
Boooooooooring
February 9, 2017
Bruce Finkin esikoisteos "Tarkastaja Canalin psykoanalyyttiset seikkailut" (Teos, 2013) päätyi lukulistalleni kustantajaluettelon lupaavalta vaikuttavan mainostekstin myötä.
Kirja sisältää kolme kertomusta, joissa ranskalainen tarkastaja Canal auttaa New Yorkin poliisivoimia erilaisten vaikeiden tapausten ratkaisemisessa. Näitä ovat esimerkiksi kadonneen Mozart-sävellyksen alkuperän selvittäminen, väärennetyn liköörin ilmestyminen markkinoille sekä New Yorkin pormestarin sekaantuminen epämääräisiin puuhiin.
Jos ryhdyt lukemaan kirjaa perinteisenä dekkarina, tulet todennäköisesti pettymään: tärkeintä on pikemminkin se, miten psykoanalyysi voi auttaa sankariamme ja hänen ystäviään ratkaisemaan paitsi rikokset, myös oman sielunelämänsä karikot.
Tarkastaja Canal osoittautuu yllättävän valjuksi hahmoksi, vaikka hänen eksentrisyyttään, snobismiaan ja yleissivistystään pyritään korostamaan kaikissa mahdollisissa tilanteissa. Se merkitsee myös sitä, että jokainen kolmesta tarinasta sisältää valtavasti hieman päälleliimattua informaatiota, joka ei oikeastaan palvele juonta millään tavalla.
Teksti sisältää melkoisesti ranskankielisiä lausahduksia ja sananparsia, joita ei sitten pahemmin avata, mikä tietysti asettaa keskiverron lukijan samaan asemaan kuin tarkastajan kanssa tekemisiin joutuvat amerikkalaisetkin.
Ei tämä oikein toiminut, mutta keskimmäinen kertomus "Väärennetyn liköörin tapaus" oli hetkittäin sen verran viehättävä, että toinen tähti tippuu niukin naukin.
Kirja sisältää kolme kertomusta, joissa ranskalainen tarkastaja Canal auttaa New Yorkin poliisivoimia erilaisten vaikeiden tapausten ratkaisemisessa. Näitä ovat esimerkiksi kadonneen Mozart-sävellyksen alkuperän selvittäminen, väärennetyn liköörin ilmestyminen markkinoille sekä New Yorkin pormestarin sekaantuminen epämääräisiin puuhiin.
Jos ryhdyt lukemaan kirjaa perinteisenä dekkarina, tulet todennäköisesti pettymään: tärkeintä on pikemminkin se, miten psykoanalyysi voi auttaa sankariamme ja hänen ystäviään ratkaisemaan paitsi rikokset, myös oman sielunelämänsä karikot.
Tarkastaja Canal osoittautuu yllättävän valjuksi hahmoksi, vaikka hänen eksentrisyyttään, snobismiaan ja yleissivistystään pyritään korostamaan kaikissa mahdollisissa tilanteissa. Se merkitsee myös sitä, että jokainen kolmesta tarinasta sisältää valtavasti hieman päälleliimattua informaatiota, joka ei oikeastaan palvele juonta millään tavalla.
Teksti sisältää melkoisesti ranskankielisiä lausahduksia ja sananparsia, joita ei sitten pahemmin avata, mikä tietysti asettaa keskiverron lukijan samaan asemaan kuin tarkastajan kanssa tekemisiin joutuvat amerikkalaisetkin.
Ei tämä oikein toiminut, mutta keskimmäinen kertomus "Väärennetyn liköörin tapaus" oli hetkittäin sen verran viehättävä, että toinen tähti tippuu niukin naukin.
November 8, 2010
This book was OK. The Psychoanalytic Adventures of Inspector Canal contained three cases. The first case was “The Case of the Lost Object” and I was disappointed with it. The second was “The Case of the Pirated Formula” which I liked, but was still weak in many areas. The third story, “The Case of the Liquidity Squeeze” was once again a disappointment. I rated each case separately with scores of a 2, 3, and 2 for a total rating of a 2. I do not want to repeat what others wrote, please read Louise Mitchell’s review that sums it up best. Weak plots, statements in French that are not translated, big words without clarification, poor accent spellings, and cases that are solved before they even begin.
I won this book through the Goodreads First Read giveaway program. Thank you to Karnac who listed this book for giveaway.
I won this book through the Goodreads First Read giveaway program. Thank you to Karnac who listed this book for giveaway.
May 17, 2012
I almost really liked this book, A little heavy handed in the details,
or I just don't have the knowledge of music history to appreciate his details. Someone with the right background and love of mysteries may
really enjoy this book
or I just don't have the knowledge of music history to appreciate his details. Someone with the right background and love of mysteries may
really enjoy this book
Read
August 15, 2014Tunnen Lacanin post-strukturalismia liian pintapuolisesti, jotta olisin oivaltanut niin paljon, mitä sanottiin. Hauska idea kirjalle kyllä!
May 20, 2013
Paikoin nokkela, mutta usein kovin osoitteleva. Keskustelut eivät ole kovinkaan luontevia. Ja trendikkäät sijoitustuotteet on sitten saatu mukaan tähänkin opukseen...
February 23, 2016
Jäi kesken tylsyytensä takia.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews