All the Yage in Reno

All the Yage in Reno is the second novel in what the Spanish critic Phillipe Cordova called the “Essential Dan Landes novels” – those four magical realism detective stories that Robert Rahula wrote during his years living in Panama (Bathhouse Stories, All the Yage in Reno, Exigent Circumstances, and Uninvited Guest) – but the fact is, the character of Dan Landes appears much earlier in Robert Rahula’s novels.  He first appears as a minor character in Island of Misfits, and then again in One Last Fling. But it was not until Bathhouse Stories that Dan Landes emerged as a true protagonist and as the embodiment of antagonism between the North American and Latin American cultures.

In his essay The Hero’s Journal, Robert Rahula wrote:  “To be a hero is to be conflicted, because the essential conflict of humans is the subduction zone between our rational analytical world and the invisible emotional world of the Fates.  One plate is invariably forced beneath the other until the pressure becomes too much.  When I talk about the inherent faults of the hero, I’m talking about actual faults, not metaphorical ones. ”

Yet, it is easy to question Dan Landes as a hero of anything. Forced to resign from his detective job in Los Angeles in disgrace, he seeks refuge in Central America, only to flee back to the states after being unwittingly drawn into a brutal murder in Panama.  He hopes Reno, Nevada, will provide the anonymity he couldn’t find south of the border.  But his journey is not a geographical one, it is a psychological one.  Like Appointment in Samarra, Dan Landes thinks he has chosen Reno to escape his past. But the Fates have different plans.  He has picked the very city where his past is waiting for him.

The beauty of Robert Rahula’s writing is that all his novels intertwine with each other, yet each stands firmly on its own as a separate story.  And while each of the “Dan Landes Mysteries” appears to follow classic detective story structure, they are really about questions of the soul.  All the Yage in Reno deals with the question of free will.  And while the themes of personal choice and fate flow through many of Robert Rahula’s novels, it is never more directly addressed than here.

If this book is your introduction to Robert Rahula’s writing, then sit back and enjoy a good murder mystery.  But also be prepared to wonder if any of our choices are really free ones.