Tuesdays this month will once again be dedicated to digging books out of my TBR pile that have lingered unloved and are likely to remain so without drastic intervention. First up, Mind Over Magic (2009) by William Rabkin, a tie-in novel from the TV show Psych (2006-14), which I’ve left unread because I figured I should watch the show first. But then I read it anyway; wow, I’m so ungovernable.

The essential conceit sees Shawn Spencer, a man who has a talent for minor observations that rivals a certain S. Holmes, apparently pretending to be psychic in a bid to help the police solve crimes. Why he can’t just tell everyone that he has a talent for observation is a) beyond me and b) hopefully explained in the TV show, but it’s worth noting that he comes to the solution of the crime herein without actually pretending to have achieved the answers through psychic means. So.

Mind Over Magic sees Shawn and his business partner Burton ‘Gus’ Guster attending a magic convention for…reasons, where P’tol P’kah — the Martian Magician, who has been selling out huge shows in his purpose-built casino in Las Veags — turns up, determined to apparently prove to the magicians present that he’s not a faker. Why he cares, since it’s made clear that the gathering is in a seedy location frequented by, at best, somewhat down-at-heel professionals, is not really covered, but nevertheless the show goes on: the seven-foot, bright green P’tol P’kah climbs into a huge glass tank of water and dissolves in front of everyone.

The only problem is that this trick, the Dissolving Man, usually ends with the magician reappearing in front of his audience, instead of completely vanishing and a dead body of a completely different person appearing in his place — which is what happens this time.

Thus Shawn and Gus are employed by P’tol P’kah’s agent or lawyer or someone to discover what happens. And so, like a good psychic wouldn’t, they go on the road, investigate physical clues, and never seem to want to talk to the dead or imply that any of Shawn’s information comes from anything other than legwork. Like a normal P.I. would do.

If you’re getting the impression I didn’t care for this book, you’re mostly right. For every well-written and genuinely humorous line…

“You’ve just got to know how magicians work,” Shawn said.

“How do they work?”

“Mostly as waiters,” Shawn said. “It’s convenient for them because they can use the tux for both jobs.”

…there are about 280 substandard attempts at badinage that read like someone put in the first thing they could think of and never kidded themself they’d go back and improve it. Shawn and Gus bicker a lot, and if you cut that out the book would be about 100 pages shorter. It gets tedious, especially when what one imagines is supposed to be a fairly rich vein of light comedy — Shawn getting P’tol P’kah’s name wrong, saying things like “P’nut P’brittle” instead — is ohmygod repeated at least thirty times and funny none of them.

And, look, Rabkin legitimately does write some good stuff, like lead detective Carlton Lassiter reflecting on his career…

[He] hadn’t become head detective of the Santa Barbara Police Department because he was stupid or gullible. He had clawed his way to that position by virtue of his superior intellect and keen instincts, along with a city budget crisis that resulted in a hiring freeze shortly after his employment, eliminating many potential competitors.

…or chapter fourteen, in which the magician Barnaby Rudge’s self-delusion is masterfully conveyed by the way he reflects in the most grandiloquent way on the magic show he’s giving to a group of bored kids. And some of the jokes do land…

It seemed like a safe bet that a woman who was covered in tattoos, called herself Phlegm, the Human Freak Show, and made her living by plunging knives into her eyes would be fairly easy to track down. At least there wouldn’t be too much trouble confusing her with any of the other Phlegm, the Human Freak Shows in the phone book.

…but it’s also clear that this is very much about enjoying being immersed in the world of the TV show, and on this evidence I do not wish to be immersed in the world of the TV show.

For one thing, the investigation is so riddled with convenience — and, c’mon, you’d never pause a VCR image and get that clear a look at what they see — that it might as well be a paved path to the conclusion. But then the conclusion comes, you wonder how the hell anyone ever figured it out — it amazes me that they don’t say ‘Yeah, Shawn got this from his psychic contact,’ because, wow, it leaves so many questions unanswered and is so reliant on so many schemes that I’m pretty certain wouldn’t work, that you wonder why anyone bothered to write a book with that at its core to begin with.

It’s also quite a bold move to make a hero out of one of the protagonists who is a pharmaceutical rep, and basically admits in the opening chapter that the whole overpriced healthcare thing is a con:

[W]hile the [new] pill was different from its predecessor only by virtue of its higher price tag, it came with an entirely new set of pens, notebooks, tote bags, T-shirts, and miscellaneous logo swag to distribute.

He’s the guy who should be getting murdered, no?

In the end, Mind Over Magic reminds me of the Monk novelisation I read for this blog, a comparison no doubt not accidental given the Monk reference made herein. If you like the show — and God help you if that’s the case — then I’m sure there’s much here to slide into, like a warm bath at the end of a trying day. For anyone who wants their answers to make sense, for their characters to be worth spending time with, and for the central conceit at the heart of the whole enterprise to have any bearing on the plot, head elsewhere.