This is part of my "rereading my bookshelves" binge -- I'm trying to only keep books that I'd really want to read again. This one is a fast-moving, quirky mystery, and the main character is a reference librarian in New York.

Really liked this book. Spoke to my inner-librarian. Great character development, intriguing story, and loved the behind-the-scenes view. I've recommended to all my librarian friends.

This is a wonderfully complicated trick of a first novel. The writing is engaging and the story is fun. I've decided to believe that all the library details are absolutely correct, especially the Lord of Misrule.

This was a fun book to read. I don't usually like mysteries. The story involves librarians, books, research, libraries, enclosures, etc. I would actually recommend this one to friends.

Mildly amusing puzzle of sorts, with a librarian trying to solve the disappearance of Marie Antoinette's watch. Interesting complications that weren't beyond my powers of deduction, and characters that weren't particularly endearing. In this library setting the books and ideas are reduced to numbers and efficiency goals, maybe all too true in large institutions.

The Grand Complication by Allen Kurzweil is a pure work of art. The mystery which revolves around the search for a lost historical timepiece contains all of the elements of an intriguing mystery. The eccentric characters are an added pleasure while the construction of the text itself into a novel of 360 pages reflecting the importance of the timepiece is truly inspired.

As a suspenseful mystery thriller, this novel could very well become an entertaining film, especially with the final scenes in the book.

I enjoyed the 'insider' humor on conducting research, and working in libraries. Someone less familiar might need to look up certain terms and practices regarding the organization and operation of libraries. That should not deter readers from this book; it's not that complicated...

Actually, I believe the author's intention (or one of them) is to motivate us to engage in some research & outside reading of our own. In that sense, when the novel ends, the mystery hasn't come to a final closure.

The book is quite generous with puns - the author / narrator plays with words, names, images, data. Also, the protagonist's description has several similarities with the biographical details of the author.)

To watch an online video of Allen Kurzweil talking about A Grand Complication, visit this link:
http://www.loc.gov/locvideo/bksbeyond...

to be honest, i don't remember much from this book... except that it's about librarians... and has this really great scene where library workers are playing this annual game, maybe it's a holiday game?, in the basement of i think it's the NYPL humanities research library... and the game is who can come up with the most accurate dewey number for a book. i so geeked out over that one...

No spoilers. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. I wanted the house, the books and the artefacts of their owner H.J Jesson and if someone wanted me to do the research given to the librarian Alexander Short, I would happily embark on it. I found all the references and descriptions of the books, furniture and artefacts very easy to visualise and relate too and I was certainly taken into this world of theirs. I felt towards the end, it became a little less believable, almost as though the author was trying to wrap up for their deadline. Still don't let that put you off, I did enjoy it and would recommend it to anyone who loves, books, libraries or antiques.

I'm a sucker of fiction in which a main character is a librarian -- that's how I ended up with this book.

The story sounded promising: a librarian who does research independently as a side job takes on the task of figuring out the meaning behind a collection of items that belonged to an 18th Century inventor for a wealthy (how convenient), eccentric client who is a bit of a mystery himself. There's also a kind of anti-love story goin on, and while parts of it are interesting, basically what's happening is that our hero-librarian's marriage is falling apart.

It is because of those passages in which he whines about his wife that I give this book low rating. Frequently, I felt he was bringing the demise of marriage on himself anyway. The bad-marriage subplot didn't really add anything to the overall story for me, and it had the added disadvantage of making the protagonist annoying and unlikeable.

I have not read the author's previous work. Since this story supposedly builds on a previous novel (A Case of Curiosities), perhaps that would have made a difference in my appreciation of the bad-marriage subplot.

Entertaining and witty literary thriller.

What an utterly delightful book! I read it in two sittings, as I was so enamored with its cleverness and wit. A “chance” meeting between librarian Alexander Short and a library patron, Henry James Jesson III begins a partnership to discover a lost relic. Jesson owns a cabinet of curiosities, but one item seems to be missing and he tasks Alexander to track it down. The investigation itself is full of twists and turns, but it is the dynamic between the two men that drives the plot. Their conversations are full of literary references and arcane anecdotes. Both Jesson and Alexander have particularities that border on obsessive compulsiveness, but that just makes them all the more fascinating.

Jesson’s wealth allows him to pursue his little projects with little care for time or money. Alexander’s position at the library gives readers a voyeuristic look behind the scenes of a New York institution. Add a historical mystery associated with Marie Antoinette and a quirky cast of peripheral characters, and you have a charming, amusing novel.