If I Go Missing

What happens when the ex-wife of an ex-cop, with a penchant for TV detectives, speculates about her own disappearance?

In this thoughtful journey, fictional detectives examine her house, her belongings, her lovers, and her longings. Who has disappeared in this finely drawn and sometimes humorous sequence of poems? Poem by poem, Carol Lynne Knight mixes imaginary investigations with the intimate, often stark, reality of life as the wife of a street cop in South Florida.

The Missing series began when Knight, watching the slow, careful investigation of Swedish detective, Kurt Wallander, hoped he would be the detective assigned to her case if she ever disappeared. In this sequence, imagine each poem beginning with the instruction, "If I go missing, send XXX to find me."

Knight presents a mix of sensual experience, dreaming. and procedural detail in this surprising, and original trope. What follows is a mélange of the essentials of a fictional detective's personality as he or she explores aspects of Knight's world. Characters from "NYPD Blue," "CSI Miami," and "Homicide: Life on the Street," among others search for her, detail by detail, and reveal an observant, funny, and spiritual poet.

A romp of the original detective, Sherlock Holmes, ends in London with the escape of the kidnapper. In "Abandoned Car Park," she counts down her last minutes kneeling in a suicide vest in a French car park. An assessment of Vera Stanhope's frumpy attire results in a shopping spree and a lost earring. At the conclusion of an interview of a fictional ex-husband by British detectives, Bailey and Scott, she hurls his old Playboy magazines into the front yard and paints her bathroom red.

That Knight was the wife of a street cop informs even the imaginary with an authentic truth. There is an intelligence, a longing, and desire evident in every poem. Each of the book's five sections is introduced by a prose poem, followed by an edgy, short poem that establishes a mood for what follows.