With the literary inventiveness of Paul Auster and the dark absurdity of Kafka, Laird Hunt’s impressive debut is a smart, funny noir that is as fittingly spare as a bare ceiling light. Deadpan delivery and a sly eye for detail characterize The Impossibly’s anonymous narrator, and when the nameless operative botches an assignment for the clandestine organization that employs him, everyone in his life—including his girlfriend—is revealed to be either true-blue, double operative, or both. The narrator’s final chilling assignment—to identify his own assassin—masterfully dismantles the reader’s own analysis of the evidence. This is a fresh, daring love story set in a world of crime and deep confusion, told by an unreliable and not-unhumorous individual, who is more interested in love than in crime and is clearly ill-equipped for both.