Conrad is a painter of negligible talent living in 1930s London. A self-styled surrealist, he enjoys the company of other artists in that movement, and is earning modest financial success because of surrealism's recent popularity. Conrad's secret, hidden even from himself, is that he really wants to be an everyday mundane person with a wife and a little house; to him, being a surrealist painter is just another job. Then he meets Caroline, a factory typist, and falls desperately in love with her. When she disappears suddenly, Conrad is forced out of his pleasant little routine and into the real-life weirdnesses of the wartime European art communities. Exquisite Corpse is a droll, brainy treat; Robert Irwin's writing is spare and taut, presenting Conrad as a weary, reluctant adventurer and a brilliantly facile narrator, as unreliable as they come. This book is at once a mystery and a brilliant character study: Did Conrad kill Caroline? Can what he says be trusted? And how will a half-hearted, workaday Dadaist react when the world around him becomes more surreal than he could imagine? A clever premise, and a fabulously enjoyable book.