During the week I read this book I also watched the 70s film “The Conversation” for the first time, which turned out to be an incredible pairing. Both are tales of paranoia and loneliness, set in San Francisco, and end on notes of open-ended vagueness, refusing to wrap everything up in a tidy bow. Honestly, if this book had explained itself in the finale it would have felt false and not loyal to the two-hundred some odd pages before it.

Another story that came to mind was the novel “Death in Her Hands” by Otessa Mossfegh. Both are novels that will rub many the wrong way, featuring unreliable (and even unlikable) narrators that are trying to solve a mystery that they don’t even fully understand. Much like that novel, The Scapegoat obfuscates instead of clarifies, its central mystery, but both create deeply felt and rendered protagonists who I felt for by the end. I believe that Mossfegh’s writing provided more sympathy and emotion than Davis’s here, but nonetheless I found it to be utterly fascinating and difficult to wrap my mind around completely, which is a ringing endorsement.

The brevity on display here is its greatest strength, as the dreamlike sequences, as effective as they are, started to become slightly repetitive as it drew on. But the writing is sharp, concise and addictive, carrying me through a strange, smoky world with ease. 3.5/5