All they wanted was to know how. I could do this, I could invent something . . . It is 1991, and on a trip to the United States to research a new novel, British artist and writer Brinsel Thomas discovers she has more to deal with than just writing. When two police officers show up at her door with questions, her next stop is the police station. One little lie intended to extricate herself from what she is certain is a terrible mistake instead snowballs into a story she cannot get out of, trapped with a secret she cannot risk giving away. Instead of working on her novel, Brinsel finds herself enlisted to help solve a murder, attempting to fabricate an incriminating correspondence, shedding a few copyrights, and dodging insistently prying questions. There is one person who she is convinced might be able to help her: a private detective and sometime-professional musician named Max Thompson. Then again, he might not. Because there is one enormous, indisputable complication . . . ""If you are a fan of the imagination and believe that it creates realities and doesn't simply make prettier the one we think we've got, you may well find this one of the more interesting books you have read for a long time. Just don't expect to understand everything until the end, and maybe not even then."" --Daniel Taylor, author of Death Comes for the Deconstructionist and other novels ""Playing a Part is a masterwork of literary fiction. This surrealist novel unravels the 'mystery' in religion and that endemic to writing. Poli grips and sustains wit in the best postmodern tradition. The book always and never takes itself too seriously. This first novel, which could only have been written by a poet who glimpses the infinite and dwells in possibility, reads like the love-child of Sayers and Sebald. Eminently readable and highly recommended."" --Frederick Roden, Professor of English, University of Connecticut ""It is a truism that authors are surprised by their characters; in her ingenious first novel, Melaney Poli makes it a truth. Playing a Part is both an intricate mystery and an intriguing exploration of the thin line between fiction and reality, madness and sanity, freedom and control."" --Michael Arditti, author of Easter, Pagan's Father, The Breath of Night and Of Men and Angels Melaney Poli is an artist and writer, and a nun of the Order of Julian of Norwich. She is the author of You Teach Me Light: Slightly Dangerous Poems (2018).