To undertake a long narrative poem, or a novel in verse, is a challenge even for a poet like Brendan Galvin, who has written twelve books of poems. We expect a best-of-both-worlds tale that blends rhythm, sound, plot, and character in ways that are both meaningful and entertaining. That Galvin's latest book is a poem is clear by its line breaks, its below-the-surface questions, and its stop-and-start syntax that succeeds in making a long story short; that it's a story is warranted by its matter-of-fact tone and the linear plot concerning an FBI investigation of a Central American-German wartime conspiracy. Galvin's sentences are so plainspoken they're practically prose, though on occasion he measures his speech in iambic hexameters. And the book is no less shrewd or philosophical for being a quick read.

The tale begins in 1976 at Hotel Malabar in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Parlin, a Yankee under suspicion for his past role as a manager of United Fruit (a banana plantation in Central America), is being tape-recorded by Sheila, an FBI agent whom Parlin imagines as the wife he betrayed years earlier. The cast includes two other FBI agents-Gorencamp and Mac-and Fermin, an Indian medicine man who accompanied Parlin north after World War II. All the characters narrate the story in turn, in their own way, with the most evasive being Parlin. We're never sure whether he's lying about his past or simply constructing his own truths. This is significant because detective fiction typically begins with an unsolved mystery and slowly fills in the pieces, but with poetry the opposite is the case: the mystery is the language and the emotions conveyed, which the narrative evokes. The central trope of the poemÑand what gives it range-is the interplay and balance between these two approaches.

A few parts don't fit together as well as they could. For example, the agent Mac contributes little to the action. And the tone of Parlin's lush, heart-of-darkness descriptions of the Central American jungle ("leaves bursting out in shapes the evil mind/ of that thing deems necessary that very day:/ murderous smells, iguanas ugly as an aguardiente nightmare, and about as long as you are tall.") seems incongruous with his practical-minded epigrams: "Mouth shut, eyes and ears open./ Sow sympathy, reap dollars. And depreciate/ nobody, as any man can do you harm." Yet these truisms reveal Parlin to be a practical man-a seemingly credible, if unsophisticated, narrator.

Should we trust Parlin? Like the cat brier that Parlin attempted to prune from his mother's cottage as a child, and about which he continues to obsess, Hotel Malabar' plot twists end up more tangled than trimmed. Galvin contributes no hard facts, only clues. He even muddies the time period in which the action occurs: the Germans were "rattling around" in Mexico City during World War I, and according to agent Gorencamp, they "built a slew of airports in striking distance of the canal." Yet references to J. Edgar Hoover, Hitler's secretary Borman, and Hitler's successor Karl Donitz, convince us that it's activities during World War II that are under investigation.

Terms like "The Bolivar Network" and acronyms like "SCADTA" and "ARCO" steer us into an ever-evasive world of espionage. Were the Germans transmitting short waves from Parlin's banana farm? Did the farm become a "Nazi spy nest" during World War II? Is Parlin a spy or simply an old, malarial fuddy duddy? Parlin appears to be working for the American government, which, in exchange for political influence, develops ports, schools, and hospitals, and offers vaccines. Yet Parlin chooses to commit treason by secretly helping the Germans. The money he makes for helping Borman escape eventually funds the hotel he builds on Cape Cod.

Treason and the pursuit of justice-whether it's Parlin or Borman that Gorencamp is after-are secondary to Galvin's more contemplative themes. Which of our memories are real and which do we revise? Why do we betray our country or our spouse? And once we learn the truth, what does it change?

As verse, the book brings these questions to the surface quicker than prose. Written entirely in dramatic monologues, Galvin's slangy, broken sentences serve two purposes. First, the narrative gapsÑwhich would be disastrous in fiction, but which in verse work to the story's advantage-encourage us to focus on ideas, not plot. Second, because monologues resemble ordinary speech, they're a credible format for the story's tape-recorded conversations and commentaries. Although this keeps the story moving, it has a downside: the verse itself lacks music. (Another mystery: is it prose or verse?) Galvin seems inattentive to the rhythm: the lines seem fast-forwarded by the plot, and the acoustics of stress and duration are largely ignored. Because the verse never turns lyrical, it fails to rouse our emotions.

The poem, ironically, is about not having. Gorencamp's quest for literal truth mirrors a more subjective one: "whenever it looks like you have everything/ you may be closest to having zip." The FBI doesn't have facts, Parlin doesn't have an accurate memory of his past or a wife to love, and Gorencamp, because of his job, no longer has a wife.

Fermin, however, has cures. When his herbal medicines heal Gorencamp of an ailment, perhaps Galvin is telling us that government-sanctioned medicines-or in this case, official prosecutions-aren't the only way to heal society's ailments. The narrative ends without a verdict, and with Gorencamp wondering whether to drop his investigation. Perhaps Parlin simply had malaria, and "was in way over/ his corney bow tie and that sad floating/ panama hat." There are no right or wrong ways, after all, to reconcile our memories, only ways of amending them that suffice.