In 1888, Shannon, a private detective from Chicago, travels to Texas to investigate a missing person: one Nathan Silverberg, who had ventured south with a clutch of donated funds intended to buy land to found a colony for Jewish refugees. What seems like a straightforward mission soon turns delightfully weird: Shannon encounters a one-winged eagle, strange sand totems with mouths full of rotten meat, a run down shack that opens into an impossible marble-clad mansion, and a group of skull-headed poker players whose game may or may not be his ticket to safety. The affect is hard-boiled mystery, if that mystery was also mystical and trippy, like washing the genre through a fun-house mirror, or trying to put the pieces of it back together after it’s been demolished by a hurricane. I loved it.