Peter Carey’s latest novel, Theft: A Love Story, is occasionally clever, often pretentious, and ultimately unsatisfying. A mish-mash of genres---Hitchcockian how-done-it, art-world satire, high-brow drama---the novel never lives up to its potential.

Michael “Butcher” Boone seems pulled from a Vanity Fair profile: A once-great artist undone by the collapse of his marriage and the scandal that followed, he emerges from obscurity only to find himself in the middle of a new controversy. He even has the requisite humble beginnings---as the son of a butcher---and modest martyrdom---as caretaker of his mentally addled brother, Hugh. He also has a rather flexible morality and a penchant for falling for the wrong woman.

As the story opens, Boone has finished a prison stint for attempting to steal his own paintings from his ex-wife. A patron has set Boone up at a country estate, ostensibly to help him get back on his feet but more likely because Boone doesn’t demonstrate much impulse control and has a tendency toward such behavior as losing his temper and violating restraining orders. But even exile can’t keep Boone out of trouble. It comes in the form of Marlene, a smart, young, and attractive woman who happens to be the daughter-in-law of Boone’s artistic hero, Jacques Liebovitz. She’s come to authenticate a painting owned by Boone’s neighbor. The painting soon goes missing, and Boone becomes the prime suspect.

From here, the story could have gone in any number of directions: clever mystery, satirical farce, personal drama. Carey, however, pursues all these avenues, and more, creating the narrative equivalent of rush hour on Mopac---moving in fits and starts, taking entirely too long to get to its destination, and tempting the reader to take the nearest exit.

Scott Snyder’s story collection Voodoo Heart also has a promising start that fails to deliver. The opening story, “Blue Yodel,” about a man stalking a blimp to find his runaway girlfriend, is clever, quirky, imaginative, and thought-provoking. The premise is intriguing, the narrative moves quickly, and the deeper meaning is woven subtly through an engaging story. You’ll want to tell all your friends to read so you can talk about it.

Unfortunately, the rest of the collection doesn’t measure up to this first story. Snyder tries too hard to be more clever and more quirky with each successive story, burying them under piles of colorful characters and absurd plots. Symbols are dropped with all the subtlety of an anvil, and the narratives slow to a snail’s pace. Attempts to link the stories with references to blimps and a particular country song feel awkward and intrusive, dropped in obtrusively, as if Snyder doesn’t trust readers to make their own connections among the stories’ interconnected themes of obsession, loss, and fear.

Indeed, it’s the author’s lack of trust---in his readers, in his characters, in his own talent for finding the small but meaningful details---that ultimately causes these stories to fail.

Theft: A Love Story
by Peter Carey
(Alfred A. Knopf, $24.00)

Voodoo Heart
by Scott Snyder
(Dial, $24.00)

Are you noticing a trend? We’re not mean people. Really. But we haven’t found much to love in summer fiction. Any recommendations? Post them below!